What’s Next: October revisited to open May

The calendar says May, but the matchups might very well say October.

The week ahead in Major League Baseball brings us the first full week of the second month of the 162-game schedule. And while the rest of the sports world might pause for two minutes to take in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, there are horse races throughout every division in the Majors with teams going all out, nose to nose, as they negotiate the crucial early furlongs.

What’s next is a seven-day slate packed with dramatic head-to-head series between clubs with the aspirations and the credentials to be around for a long time, possibly all the way to the World Series.

To start, we go north of the border to Toronto and back to the scene of “The Flip.”

Last October, the Blue Jays and Rangers were embroiled in one heck of an American League Division Series. It came down to a wacky and unforgettable seventh inning of Game 5 in Rogers Centre, where Texas took the lead on a disputed play in the top of the inning only to commit three consecutive errors to allow Toronto to load the bases in the bottom of the frame.

Jose Bautista took it from there, unleashing the most famous home run in Canada since Joe Carter’s World Series walk-off shot in 1993 and one of the most famous bat tosses ever.

Six months later, the Blue Jays have been slow to get out of the gate, but they’re still a good week from being right back in the thick of the AL East. The Rangers are right there at the top of the AL West. And now they meet again in Toronto with a four-game series to begin the week.

“They can still impact the baseball, and they like playing in their ballpark,” Rangers manager Jeff Banister said of the Blue Jays’ lineup. “We’ll have to play good baseball and pitch it well.”

The same can be said for most of the teams …

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