Quote:
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.
|
This is why baseball is stupid.
They should pick one way of determining who is in first place and stick to it. If you're going to count a team's head-to-head record against another team to determine who ends up on top, you should do it across the board. Yankees end up 10-9 against Boston? They win the division. If the Red Sox and Cleveland then end up tied, the next question should be: What is Boston's h2h record against Cleveland? If they have a better record, they should win the wild card. If all three teams have the same record at the end of the season, then the team with the best h2h record against the other team in its division, should win the division and the team with the best h2h record out of the remaining two should win the wildcard.
Right now, if they all would have finished with the same record, the h2h records mean nothing and the Yankees play the Sox in a playoff for the division title and the loser plays the Indians for the Wildcard? That's retarded.
I prefer the way they did it before the wildcard, though. If you are tied (Wildcard or Division Champs), you are tied and should play a one game playoff.
TM
