The playoffs can be unpredictable, but the Yankees have at least put themselves in the mix, winning seven of their last eight games since the ugly loss in Boston on July 26. At that point, Baltimore was considered the favorite to win the AL East, but improved play and a relatively easy schedule have worked in the Yankees’ favor. Now, the Yankees have a 58.9 percent chance of winning the division, compared to Baltimore’s 40.3 percent.

With the Angels coming to The Bronx on Tuesday, followed by the Rangers — who don’t look like a threat to challenge for a second straight World Series title — and then trips to face the historically bad White Sox and Detroit, the Yankees are in the midst of a 15-game stretch in which they don’t play a team over .500. Besides doing what they are supposed to do against weak competition, what else has to go right for the Yankees to hold off the Orioles to win the AL East and be a real threat in the postseason?

As the Yankees desperately look for protection for Judge, who got the Barry Bonds treatment — or, as Aaron Boone called it, the Aaron Judge treatment — from Toronto this past weekend, they continue to rely heavily on their two stars. Judge’s toe injury last year ended any hopes of a second-half comeback, and this year, Soto has been playing with a bruised right hand that he aggravated Sunday.

The Yankees still haven’t found ideal bookends for Soto hitting second and Judge third, and if they don’t, Judge will likely see even fewer pitches. The Yankees breathed a collective sigh of relief Sunday after Cole’s solid outing against Toronto, following his scratch in Philadelphia.

But Cole still hasn’t approached the effectiveness — let alone dominance — he showed over the past six seasons. He’s giving up more hits and home runs than at any point during that stretch and isn’t getting as many strikeouts. Torres had a good bounce-back year last season and LeMahieu had a decent second half.

It remains to be seen what kind of impact, if any, Aaron Boone’s in-game benching of Torres has had, and while LeMahieu has had a solid week at the plate after months of looking lost, the team’s bullpen remains shaky. The closer has six blown saves in his last 17 appearances after blowing just three in his first 30 games.

Opposing batters have an .820 OPS against the closer over that same 17-game span, compared to a .581 OPS in those opening 30 games. The Yankees continue to say he’s pitching into tough luck and many of the advanced metrics back that up, but the results have not been good of late.

The Yankees have no excuses on why they were sleeping on teams like Baltimore and Boston, but they have beat those teams and any other team below .500 if they want to win the American League East. As they take on the Los Angeles Angels in Yankee Stadium, they continue this hot streak of winning seven of their last ten games, and the offense stays red hot, hopefully the pitching shakes this up a bit and starts to wake up going forward.