OK. Go find a quiet room, sit in a comfortable chair and clear your head from any and all distractions. I’m going to attempt to explain how the playoff tiebreakers will work if the Phillies don’t surge past the Mets to win the NL East.
I’m not kidding – you have to concentrate on this.
Ready? Here we go:
We all know how a tiebreaker would work if two teams are deadlocked at the end of the season, but what happens if the season ends and three or four teams are tied for first place in the wild-card race.
Truth be told, I didn’t know.
But I found out.
But first, here’s the basic stuff: if the Mets and Phillies end the regular season tied atop the NL East, there would be a one-game playoff Monday here at the Bank to determine the division champion.
Likewise, if the Phillies finish the season tied with either the Rockies or Padres for the wild card, the Phillies would play the one-game playoff on the road as determined by a coin toss earlier this month.
But suppose the Phillies finish the season tied with two of the three teams in the hunt in the NL West (Padres, D’backs, Rockies). In that case, there would be an “A,B,C” tiebreaker, which goes like this:
The team with the best record against the other two teams gets to decide whether it wants to be Team A, B or C. The team with the second-best record gets to chose one of the two remaining spots and then, Team A would host Team B on Monday, and the winner of that game would host Team C on Tuesday.
The winner of Tuesday’s game wins the wild card.
So here’s how it stands now:
The Phillies are 7-7 against the Padres and Rockies; the Padres were 11-14 against the Phillies and Rockies; while the Rockies were 14-11 against the other two clubs. This means the Rockies would get to chose which letter they wanted to be and the Phillies would get second pick.
Logically, it seems, the Rockies would not want to play two games in order to go to the playoffs, so unless they get a brain cramp like that coach in overtime football game on Thanksgiving a few years back who won the coin toss and elected to kickoff, the Rockies will elect to be Team C.
With second choice, the Phillies would take the Team A slot and would host the Padres on Monday and if they survived that game, they would face the Rockies at the Bank on Tuesday to determine the wild-card winner.
The monkey wrench is if the Padres or Rockies overtake the Diamondbacks for first place in the NL West to send them back into the wild-card mix. But either way, as long as the Phillies continue to win games, they will be playing baseball in October.
Got it?
But what if something really weird happens and Phillies, Mets, Rockies, Diamondbacks and Padres all finish with the same record.
- On Monday, the Mets and Phillies would play to determine the division champion. The loser falls into the wild-card mix and would play Wednesday against whichever other teams in the wild-card pile-up.
- The three N.L. West teams would play an A/B/C tie-breaker, with the winner emerging as the division champion.
- The two losers will join the Mets in another A/B/C tie-breaker, to be played Wednesday and Thursday, with the winner of that capturing the wild card.
If all else fails, the National League’s representatives in the post-season will be determined by a rock, paper, scissors round-robin.