There are 2,430 baseball games staged across MLB\u2019s regular season, and in principle, each one holds identical gravity and importance. As we now narrow into the middle of September, though, certain ones come to matter far more than others. We hope everyone attending the upcoming action in Miami, Minnesota and Washington have the times of their respective lives, but committed baseball fans will be looking elsewhere this weekend.<\/p>\n
A few series are worth monitoring if things really go off the rails. Toronto could lose its grip on the AL East if it drops games to Baltimore. Cleveland could lurch into contention for the final wild-card spot if it handles business with the White Sox, and the same goes for Cincinnati against the lowly Athletics. As it stands, here are the main series to tune in to across the next three days \u2014 headlined by two all-time strong rivalries and a former Cy Young winner\u2019s return to his original home ballpark.<\/p>\n
All times listed below are ET.<\/p>\n
You can stream in-market and nationally televised MLB games on Fubo (Watch Now<\/a>).<\/p>\n Yankees at Red Sox NYY in-market: YES Aaron Boone\u2019s Yankees scored seven straight Ws between Aug. 24-30, then earned impressive series wins against division leaders Houston and Toronto. New York struggled with Detroit in the Bronx, but it\u2019s still ensconced among the playoff shuffle and in outside range of an AL East title at 81-65.<\/p>\n So is Boston at 81-66. The up-and-down Red Sox campaign has been particularly volatile of late. Since Aug. 25: four consecutive wins, then back-to-back losses, three more Ws, three more Ls, three more Ws and a walk-off stinging defeat to the A\u2019s on Wednesday.<\/p>\n The brilliant and fiery Garrett Crochet is Sunday\u2019s probable starter, and Fenway Park will be packed to capacity for a charged edition of \u201cSunday Night Baseball.\u201d National audiences can watch all three games \u2026 if they have an Apple TV account for Friday\u2019s streaming exclusive. As of Friday, the Yanks and Sox hold the top two wild-card spots while trailing the Blue Jays by 3 and 3 1\/2 games, respectively. Boston is 8-2 in this year\u2019s head-to-head against its archrival, with a plus-18 run differential.<\/p>\n Rangers at Mets TEX in-market: Rangers Sports Network, Victory+ Jacob deGrom, the New York Met: 2.52 ERA, a gnarly K\/9 rate of 10.9, two Cy Young honors and a Rookie of the Year trophy. It should be awesome to see the generational (when healthy) ace take the bump Friday in Flushing for meaningful September ball. Texas starts the weekend within striking distance of the third and final AL wild-card spot. It will need to take at least two of three from New York to gain ground.<\/p>\n The blue and orange has been repurposed in the last week \u2014 think the sad kind of blue and that warning shade of orange. Carlos Mendoza and the Mets have dropped six outings in a row at a supremely unfortunate time. Even more stressful for their fans is this weekend\u2019s pitching alignment. Right-handed probables Jonah Tong (Friday, two career starts), Brandon Sproat (Saturday, one start) and Nolan McLean (Sunday, five starts) assume some of the most pressurized innings of the season. New York has a tenuous hold on the last NL wild-card spot, with Cincinnati and San Francisco on its heels.<\/p>\n Dodgers at Giants LAD in-market: Spectrum SportsNet While the Yankees and Red Sox face off out east, a similarly historic rivalry goes down along the San Francisco Bay. The Giants are 6-3 to start September, with a massive plus-21 run differential in those nine games. They\u2019re 2-4 against the Dodgers and just 37-35 at home this season, but their top-line hitters are raking right now. Across the last 15 calendar days: six homers for Willy Adames, a .950 OPS for Rafael Devers and four different Giants with double-digit RBIs (those two sluggers plus Drew Gilbert and Dominic Smith). If the squad in Flushing keeps flushing away its goodwill, San Francisco could be in that all-too-familiar<\/a> postseason sleeper role.<\/p>\n The incumbent World Series champs have been underwhelming since the start of the summer. L.A. lost two of three to Arizona at the end of August, before getting swept in Pittsburgh to start September. The Dodgers then endured back-to-back walk-off indignities in Baltimore last weekend, only to get right with a three-game sweep of Colorado (to be fair, most teams have swept the 2025 Rockies).<\/p>\n The big-ticket arms are out for Los Angeles here: Yoshinobu Yamamoto (2.72 ERA) on Friday, Clayton Kershaw (3.27 ERA) on Saturday, and Tyler Glasnow (3.21 ERA) to close it out Sunday afternoon.<\/p>\n Honorable mention: the AL West situation<\/p>\n Houston and Seattle are still jostling for control of their division. That has set up a cool thread between the haves (the Astros made six ALCS berths between 2017-22 and won two titles) and the very much Oliver Twist have-nots (the Mariners have one playoff appearance after 2001, and lost that 2022 ALDS to Houston in a 3-0 sweep).<\/p>\n It\u2019s a bit less thrilling because each team\u2019s weekend opponent has been discarded for October ball. But Seattle hosts three more vital games with the Los Angeles Angels, and Houston heads to Atlanta for a tangle with the Braves. This weekend will be important, though the Mariners will visit the Astros at the once and former \u201cJuice Box<\/a>\u201d\u00a0next weekend (Sept. 19-21). Look out for that one \u2014 after we cross this bridge.<\/p>\n Updated MLB playoff odds<\/p>\n Ticketing and streaming links in this article are provided by partners of The Athletic. Restrictions may apply.\u00a0The Athletic\u00a0maintains full editorial independence. Partners have no control over or input into the reporting or editing process and do not review stories before publication.<\/p>\n (Photo of Garrett Crochet: Winslow Townson \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are 2,430 baseball games staged across MLB\u2019s regular season, and in principle, each one holds identical gravity…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,5156,5163,1187,591,1830,2704,5157,5162,85,23371,2367],"class_list":["post-138872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-houston-astros","tag-los-angeles-dodgers","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-mets","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-seattle-mariners","tag-sports","tag-sports-betting","tag-texas-rangers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nFriday, 7:10 p.m. on Apple TV+
\nSaturday, 4:10 p.m. on MLB Network \/ MLB.TV
\nSunday, 7:10 p.m. on ESPN<\/p>\n
BOS in-market: NESN<\/p>\n
\nFriday, 7:10 p.m. on MLB Network \/ MLB.TV
\nSaturday, 4:10 p.m. on MLB.TV
\nSunday, 1:40 p.m. on MLB Network \/ MLB.TV<\/p>\n
NYM in-market: SNY (Fri. and Sat.), WPIX (Sun.)<\/p>\n
Jacob deGrom, the Texas Ranger: 2.70 ERA, a 10.4 K\/9 mark and one bittersweet World Series ring<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\nFriday, 10:15 p.m. on MLB Network \/ MLB.TV
\nSaturday, 9:05 p.m. on MLB.TV
\nSunday, 4:05 p.m. on MLB.TV<\/p>\n
SF in-market: NBCS BA, KNTV (Friday over the air)<\/p>\n