Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
September 15, 2006
Ambiguous Tiebreaker

I cannot find the rule that covers the following situation. LA, SD and SF tie for the division lead, but also tie for the wild card (no other teams involved). The rules for breaking two similar situations are here:

Scenario #4: If three Clubs are tied for first place in a Division (or Wild Card) with an identical winning percentage at the conclusion of the championship season and the tied Clubs do not have identical records against one another in the championship season, the tie for the Division Championship (or Wild Card) shall be broken as follows:

A lengthy exposition of the playoff ensues.

Scenario #5: If three Clubs in a League are tied with identical winning percentages at the end of the championship season and two of those tied Clubs are from the same Division and are also tied for first place in that Division and the third tied Club has the highest winning percentage among the second-place Clubs in the remaining two Divisions, the Division Champion shall first be determined by a one-game playoff on Monday, September 29. Any playoff games played to determine a Division champion shall not count in determining which Clubs are deemed tied for a Wild Card designation. Clubs that were originally tied with a Club or Clubs for a Wild Card designation shall still be considered tied.

My question is, in a three way tie for the division, where one team will be the wild card and one the division winner, is winning one game enough? Is the winner of game one automatically in the playoffs even if it loses game 2, or does it need to play a third game against the loser of game one? What if the winner of game one wins game 2? The you have two teams with 0-1 records in the division playoff, and it seems you need a third game between them to settle the WC. But if game 1 and game 2 produce different winners, I'm not sure if you really need a game three. I've called MLB, but I'm not sure if or when they'll get back to me.

This can have a huge impact on which team (A, B or C) you choose to be. Most teams would choose C if there are only two games to play, since that will provide you with less chance of losing one. But if you can guarantee a spot in the playoffs by winning game 1, you might take team A and try to win at home, especially if you match up well with that opponent at home.


Posted by David Pinto at 12:41 PM | Division Races | TrackBack (0)
Comments

It's a good thing you called, David. Otherwise, Bud would never have know it was coming.

Posted by: Barron at September 15, 2006 01:13 PM

Thanks for posting this, David. It does not appear that the example given on the MLB site anticipates a three-way tie in a single division for both the division championship and the wild-card, but the principle appears to apply. The team with the best head-to-head record (currently the White Sox, but still several games to go) would choose A, B, or C. Of course, they would choose C, because that would mean an automatic playoff spot. The winner of A & B would also have a playoff spot. The question then becomes -- isn't the second game unnecessary, since a tie for two spots between two teams in the same division could and normally would be broken by head-to-head records.

Posted by: Tor at September 15, 2006 01:37 PM

Phil Rogers states that the top two teams based on combined head-to-head records would play for the division, with the loser playing the third team for the wild card.

If true this would mean that the third team would be denied a chance at playing a tiebreaker game for the division crown.

http://www.charlotte.com/mld/charlotte/sports/baseball/15535288.htm

"Heard here first

In the unlikely event the AL Central somehow wound up in a three-way tie, the White Sox probably would have to win only one of two games to make the playoffs while either the Twins or Tigers could be forced to win two in a row to get in. Under MLB's three-way tie scenario, teams would be seeded according to their combined head-to-head records. The two highest seeds would play for the division title, and the loser plays the lowest seed for the wild card.

Entering this week's Tigers-White Sox series, the standings look like this_White Sox, 18-14 (thanks to an 11-5 edge over Detroit); the Twins, 17-18, and the Tigers, 16-19."

Posted by: tiebroker at September 16, 2006 07:56 PM
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