Summer may be over, but the fall baseball season and chances for the Toronto Blue Jays playing in the playoffs are only beginning.

September is going to be the most crucial month for the organization, with its division lead reduced to three games. Getting to the playoffs may not necessarily be a question, but securing the division lead or dropping to the Wild Card spot will potentially determine the fortune of their October baseball.

Winning as many games as possible should still be Toronto’s motto for the rest of the regular season, and the Blue Jays will have to find ways to win these four key series to come out on top of a tough September stretch.

And so they meet again at the most critical juncture of the season.

This time, the Blue Jays are visiting the New York Yankees at their home turf. Even though the Yankees fell into misery during some part of the summer, they have found ways to take advantage of the easier stretch of their schedule–that included the Washington Nationals and the Chicago White Sox–and flexed their home run power.

They are only 3.5 games behind the Blue Jays for the AL East lead, and the Yankees will do everything in their power to overtake the division after mostly getting humiliated by the Blue Jays this season. This is reminiscent of the time when New York entered Rogers Centre with a three-game lead in the AL East division at the end of June. Whoever wins the series will have a significant advantage in their quest for the top spot in the division.

The Yankees rely on their explosive offensive performance, while the Blue Jays rely more on playing fundamental baseball with a touch of peskiness. The result of this series will indicate which may be a more sustainable way to secure the best playoff position.

If there is a team the Blue Jays haven’t come out on top so far in the AL West, that would be the Houston Astros. Despite the Astros’ losing some key players this past winter and dealing with key injuries throughout this season, Toronto didn’t quite find the way to take advantage of these holes when the two teams faced off against one another earlier in the year.

Fast forward to the end of summer, and Houston is now a worse team on paper, at least in terms of the win-loss record. However, this team still has scary contributors like Framber Valdez and Hunter Brown dominating the rotation, Yordan Alvarez and Carlos Correa becoming the face of the offence, and Bryan Abreu locking it down as the closer. The Blue Jays couldn’t secure any wins at Daikin Park a few months ago; the question now is whether playing at Rogers Centre will turn into a key advantage for the Blue Jays, who struggled against the current AL West division leader.

Adding more to this storyline is the Blue Jays not holding the tiebreaker against the Astros, let alone even one win. There isn’t really any path to take back the tiebreaker, and the best Toronto can do is to even out the record by sweeping the Astros. Even if Canada’s team can only secure a series win, that should help the team to make a strong case for either holding down the division lead or the first Wild Card spot. It will all depend on how the Blue Jays play against the Cincinnati Reds and the New York Yankees before facing the Astros.

The Tampa Bay Rays have been the Blue Jays’ kryptonite forever, and this year hasn’t been an exception. The Rays have had the Blue Jays’ playbook–the fact that Toronto could eke out one win against this Floridian team was already a miracle on its own.

As much as the Blue Jays would love to avoid playing against the Rays, the unfortunate news is that these two were always going to face each other more as division rivals. So, to their dismay, Toronto is headed to Steinbrenner Field once again to play Tampa for a four-game series and will also finish the year against Tampa back at the Rogers Centre. Back when two teams faced each other earlier this season, the Rays had a chance at the playoffs, and the Blue Jays were struggling. Heading into September, two teams are on completely different trajectories, and Toronto has more advantage against Tampa Bay on paper this time.

Yet, the Rays’ pitching has remained dominant and has specialized in developing unknown pitchers into weapons up and down their rotation. Not only that, but Tampa also has a knack for exhibiting dominant offence from time to time. This is what plagued the Blue Jays earlier this season. If they have the chance to flip the script, that time would be when they are heading back to Florida.

Zooming out of the series, Toronto can’t really afford to lose or get swept any longer this deep into the regular season with a division lead or a Wild Card spot on the line. It also doesn’t help that the Boston Red Sox will be facing the (Sacramento) Athletics, while the New York Yankees face the Minnesota Twins during that exact stretch. Losing this series could loom large for the Blue Jays, with all the “what ifs” opening up the can of worms. The best thing the Jays can do is dominate the first series and make the second one a moot point.

The Blue Jays and the Red Sox will meet each other for the final time this season at the end of September. By then, both teams will still be in the thick of either battling for the AL East division lead or one of the top Wild Card spots, depending on how the early and mid-September game results shake out.

The great news for the Blue Jays is that they will always hold a tiebreaker against the Red Sox, no matter what, given that they secured more series wins against them earlier in the year. The not-so-great news is that Boston has unlocked another level and isn’t going to make anything easy on the Blue Jays. They now have tons of intriguing young players like Roman Anthony, Brayan Bello, Ceddanne Rafaela and Payton Tolle. Veterans like Alex Bregman and Trevor Story are far from being pushovers, and pitchers like Garrett Crochet and Aroldis Chapman are giving Boston more chances to win.

The quest for Toronto at this time of the year will be targeting Boston’s weakness while maximizing its strength. As successful as the Red Sox have been, their starting rotation depth isn’t quite as deep. The Blue Jays will have to find ways to take full advantage of that if they want a chance at securing one last series win against their division rival. Keep in mind, the Yankees will be playing the Chicago White Sox again, which puts extra pressure on both the Red Sox and the Blue Jays to beat each other up more. Whoever wins this series will have the final say in either the best or the next best playoff seed in the AL.

Love baseball? Don’t miss The 6ix Inning Stretch — the brand new podcast from The Nation Network, presented by Betway. Hosted by Toronto sports reporter Lindsay Dunn and 3-time MLB All-Star Whit Merrifield, this weekly show delivers insider stories, unfiltered Jays talk, player interviews, and expert analysis from around the majors. New episodes drop every Wednesday — listen on your favourite podcast platform or watch on the Bluejaysnation YouTube channel.