2007-08-28 19:33:29 · 8 answers · asked by hailstorm2007 2 in Sports ➔ Baseball
All ties are broken by one game playoffs (unless the second place team would be the wildcard anyway).
There are no tie-breakers used in baseball! In fact if you pay close attention to the news notes about your favorite contending team, sometime in the next week or so there will a whole bunch of coin flips between all the contending teams within a division and wild card contenders. The coin flips are to determine who would be the home team for the 1 game play-off to determine the division winner (or wild-card).
If all 16 (or 14 AL teams) finished 81-81, I presume there would be a series of 1 game playoffs until you get down to 4 teams.
Your scenario is very unlikely, but there was a season where teams were close to having to play two 1 game playoffs. It almost happened where two division leaders tied, who also tied the top wildcard team. The division leaders would have played a one game playoff with the loser playing the top wildcard contender.
Below is an article describing one set of coin flips from last season. The second one describes the exact procedure including a three-way tie. Tie-breakers are only used if both teams will make the playoffs anyway.
2007-08-28 20:12:45 · answer #1 · answered by jim 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
Excellent question, although this will never happen. I think that you would essentially have a playoff-playoff. Basically just an extended playoffs with home advantage decided based upon the following priorities
1. National League record
2. Division record
3. Record against particular opponents
Some of these are impossible to hold a .500 record in for all teams because of an odd number of games being played between particular opponents, for instance, during the regular season.
2007-08-28 19:41:06 · answer #2 · answered by iknowball 5 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Interesting question... I don't think this is really possible with unbalanced schedules and interleague play, but it would be crazy if it did happen. They would use all of the crazy tie-breaker rules the Selig devised and no one else on the entire planet really understands fully. I think it would result in a lot of one game playoffs with four teams emerging from the mess to eventually make the actual playoffs. Lets hope that this scenario never plays out because I think my head would explode trying to figure out how it all worked.
2007-08-28 20:16:22 · answer #3 · answered by ajn4664_ksu 4 · 0⤊ 1⤋
No idea -- I doubt MLB has a plan for this, unless it's something expanded from the existing contingencies -- but Bud Selig, having achieved his lifelong dream of perfect parity (read: mediocrity), would probably die in his sleep an ecstatically happy man.
2007-08-28 19:42:05 · answer #4 · answered by Chipmaker Authentic 7 · 1⤊ 0⤋
We'd be playing the World Series in December, lol. I'm just waiting for the baseball info pros to do this one.
2007-08-28 19:40:39 · answer #5 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 1⤋
Divisions decided by division record tebreakers, then head-to-head. Wild card decided by head-to-head for each team versus the pool, then by head-to-head versus any teams still tied.
2007-08-28 19:41:22 · answer #6 · answered by quint 3 · 0⤊ 1⤋
head to head would be a decider.
go to MLB.com
there is a five point tie breaker
and last one is a coin flip I believe.
2007-08-29 02:37:58 · answer #7 · answered by Michael M 7 · 0⤊ 1⤋
i think it will go on runs conceded and runs scored and work out the difference
2007-08-28 19:53:12 · answer #8 · answered by rawfodog 1 · 0⤊ 3⤋