MLB: The AL Wild Card race setting up for tiebreakers
By Jason Burke
When MLB added a second Wild Card to the mix ahead of the 2012 season, fan bases immediately started to feel more hopeful about their team’s chances of getting a shot to make some noise in October. This year, there could be absolute mayhem.
Today’s game isn’t like versions of MLB in the past. Now there are shifts, unprecedented home run rates, stat cast data and two Wild Cards for teams to claim as entry into October baseball. Those two Wild Card spots look primed to make a mess of things after the season concludes.
Here is where things stand in the AL Wild Card race entering play on Monday:
Yankees +2.5
Twins, Angels —
Royals, Mariners 1.5 GB
Rangers 2.5 GB
Rays, Orioles 4.0 GB
Blue Jays 5.0 GB
So essentially the entire American League is vying for two playoff spots with the Astros (12), Indians (5) and Red Sox (5) all holding healthy leads in their respective divisions. A quick look over at the FanGraphs projected win-loss records shows that the standings listed above are not to be taken lightly.
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They have the Yankees finishing with 86 wins and sealing up the first Wild Card spot. Behind them things get extremely interesting. The Rays (79.2), Orioles (78.8) and Jays (78.9) will all be floating around .500, but that may be all that it takes to claim this second spot.
The Twins (82.6) and Angels (82.8) are already set to make things interesting being that they’re already tied and projected to finish with nearly identical records. The Royals (81.8), Mariners (80.9) and Rangers (80.1) are still within a win of the .500 mark as well, and, well, same rules apply.
So what does this mean? Well, we don’t necessarily know. Ben Lindbergh talked about a past article that he wrote for Baseball Prospectus on a recent episode of Effectively Wild, in which he mentioned that baseball doesn’t have a plan in place for anything more than a four-way tie. If the Twins, Angels, Royals, Mariners and Rangers keep up at their pace, that’s what we could be in for. And heaven forbid if the Rays, Jays and O’s decide to make runs of their own.
If all of these teams end up tying for one spot it would be awesome for the pure mayhem and unprecedented nature of the event, but it would also take away a bit from the relative fairness of the playoffs. While the Wild Card winner is generally at a slight disadvantage after having (presumably) burned their best starting pitcher in the play-in game, this instance could call for days of extra games just to get to that Wild Card game, eating up the pitching staffs from each club.
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Of course that unfairness only occurs if there is such a dramatic tiebreaker scenario, and the Yankees don’t end up winning the one-game playoff anyway, but say a team like the Mariners makes it all the way to the ALDS to face the Houston Astros in the first round and they already had to burn at least James Paxton and Felix Hernandez (assuming they’re healthy). Then they’d have to throw out Ariel Miranda and Yovani Gallardo in the first two games of the ALDS, severely limiting any chances they have of winning the series.
While I would like nothing more than getting extra free baseball with seasons hanging in the balance, I am weighing that with the question of whether it would hurt the product for the rest of October. What do you think of a possible tiebreaker scenario? How much is too much? Can there be too much? Sound off in the comments below!