The AL East still has a ton of games head-to-head against the four opponents, but this, I believe, is the best the division can do to end in a tie:
| Red Sox | 11-9 |
| Blue Jays | 13-7 |
| Orioles | 13-7 |
| Yankees | 15-5 |
Twenty eight of these games will be head-to-head contests. Boston plays 17 of those games, so there is plenty of opportunity to catch the Red Sox. Due to the Yankees playing a three-game series with Baltimore to end the season, and the Red Sox playing a three-game series against Toronto at the same time, there are very few combinations going into that last weekend that would make a tie possible.
There is even a more massive tie possible for the wild card slots, but I’m going to wait for that to sort itself out a bit more. A five-way tie for the second wild card would be quite disruptive of the AL post-season schedule. Since the AL is hosting the World Series, all of their rounds start a day earlier than the NL rounds.
A three-way tie for the two NL Wild Card slots would be easier to achieve:
| Giants | 17-3 |
| Mets | 18-1 |
| Cardinals | 19-1 |
The Giants and Cardinals play four games head-to-head, which is why the Cardinals can’t run the table. I was surprised to see that there would be two playoff games to determine the participants in the Wild Card game. I assumed the two lower seeds would simply play for the right to face the higher seed, and that game would be the Wild Card game. Instead, the two high seeds play game one, with the winner the wild card game host. The remaining two teams play for the second slot. It’s nice that MLB is doing this right.
It’s also possible the Giants pull the Dodgers back into this competition, so stay tuned.
from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2ciNCYf
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