Toronto was clearly the favorite to win the AL East and the NYY were sort of expected to get at least the 2nd wild card at 88 or so wins and I believe they won 85 games somehow.
Now since you have to win 3 playoff series ( 4 if you get in via the wildcard) nobody should be much less than +700 and the Bosox finishing last should have been rather long since they were sort of projected to finish maybe third in the division ?