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[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by str8outavannuys
Amazingly, with all these posts, nobody has answered Paigow's question of why the Cleveland game affected the Yankees "clinching," as Cleveland's in a different division.

The answer is that if a division ends up in a tie, and IF BOTH TEAMS ARE NOT AUTOMATICALLY IN THE PLAYOFFS, then they play a one-game playoff to see who wins the division. But if a division is a tie and both teams are in the playoffs, they go to the head-to-head tiebreaker to see who gets the (pretty meaningless) "division title") instead of playing another game.

Cleveland losing today meant that if there was a tie, both the Yankees and Red Sox would make the playoffs, thus guaranteeing the Yankees the division title (because of the head-to-head record). If the Indians had won today and tomorrow, and the Yanks and Sox had split today and tomorrow, then all three would finish with the same record, thus requiring a Yanks-Red Sox division title playoff game, followed by loser-vs-Cleveland game for the wildcard.

I hope that's the last word. I will now go back to kicking myself for not teasing USC by 6.5 or 7 points instead of 6 (off of a 16.5 point spread) in my teaser with Wisconsin and UCLA. Maybe UCLA will choke, thus making it academic.

Translation: Hank is right.