Thread: Tie-breakers
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Old 01-31-2013, 05:21 PM   #16
Le Grande Orange
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Quote:
Originally Posted by bwburke94 View Post
The five team tiebreaker for one spot would go like this:

Assign teams the rankings A, B, C, D, and E based on head-to-head results between the tied teams. The best team would be A and the worst team would be E.

If tied for the division title or the division title and one wild card spot:

Day 1: E @ D, C @ A
Day 2: B @ E/D winner
Day 3: C/A winner @ Day 2 winner

If tied for both wild card spots:

Same as above, but Day 3 would be the wild card playoff game. Home field would be determined by H2H record between the teams.

If tied for the division title and both wild card spots:
(Games in italics are play-in games for the wild card spots.)

Day 1: E @ D, C @ A
Day 2: B @ E/D winner
Day 3: C/A winner @ Day 2 winner
Day 4: C/A loser @ E/D loser, Day 2 loser @ Day 3 loser
Day 5: Wild card playoff game
I doubt that latter one. Mostly because MLB has reworked the tie-breaking so that any combination of up to four teams tied can be resolved by no more than two days of tie-breaking games. And that's because with the addition of the Wild Card Game there simply isn't time in the post-season schedule for a protracted tie-breaking session. So I suspect even in the case of a five-club tie it wouldn't last more than two days, which means one team probably gets shortchanged. (That's actually the case already in the case of a three-way tie for a division title and one wild card spot.)
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