Tiebreaker/Home Field Scenario - How to Handle?
 

So I've got an interesting dilemma at the end of my OOTP regular season (circa 2000).

The Orioles won the AL East with the best record in baseball and the Rangers won the Wild Card, so they'll meet in the ALDS. No problems there.

The Twins won the AL Central with a record of 98-64.
The A's won the AL West with a record of 98-63.

At the moment, Oakland has the higher winning percentage on account of having lost one less game. Head-to-head the A's and Twins are 6-6 on the season.

The game that Oakland is missing is against the New York Yankees in the Bronx. Oakland just finished hosting the Rangers in the season finale.

If this happened in real life, what would MLB do? Force the A's to travel cross country, play the Yankees in New York on Monday, and then if they win travel back to Oakland to start the playoffs?

I checked MLB's website on tiebreakers as well as Wiki pages - from what I can tell - if two teams have the same winning percentage and are tied head-to-head, the next tiebreaker is intradivision record. I had to calculate that manually since OOTP doesn't specifically track it, but the Twins were 32-18 against the AL Central (.640) and the A's were 23-15 against the AL West (.605).

Given that, if the A's were to lose the makeup game to the Yankees, the Twins would hold that tiebreaker and get home field advantage.

So first question, what would MLB do? Would they give the A's the option to skip the trip to New York and forfeit home field advantage to the Twins?

Second question, what would YOU do if you were the A's? Would you make the cross country trip and back, risk the possibility of an injury or throwing your rotation/bullpen out of wack to try to get the win against the Yankees (who finished second in the wild card just a couple games behind the Rangers) and hope you get home field?

Curious to hear what people think. Thanks!

A's will always be the #2 and Twins #3. The lone exception would be if you had the A's tied with the Rangers for the Wild Card and Division under the Wild Card Game rule, then the A's would've made the game up to avoid/force a tiebreaker game.

Thanks for the response! But if what you say is right, I'd be pretty upset if I were the Twins. A shot at home field taken away because a rainout in June was never made up?

That said, it is a pretty unreasonable thing to ask of the A's to make the game up. I tried looking up MLB policy for makeup games at the end of the season and couldn't find anything - looks like they only did it when it affected the winner of a title and not for homefield though.

Meh - Every team starts the season at 0-0 and they do so knowing what the rule is in the event your scenario occurs. The only thing the Twins should be upset about is the fact they only won 98 games, and not 99. They were in control of their own destiny from day one :D

Very well - but I still think the Twins are gonna blame it on the rain! :D

In the NL I had a scenario where the Wild Card team finished 102-60 in the same division as the NL Central Champion with the best record at 104-58. I know there was a rule in 2000 preventing the #1 seed from playing the wild card team if it was in their own division, so the #1 seed plays the division winner with the worst record.

That leaves a team with a record of 97-65 playing the 102-60 wild card team.

I assume the division winner at 97-65 still gets homefield advantage despite having the worse record - correct?

From 1998 thru 2011, the Wild Card team could not play the #1 seed if the #1 seed won the division that the Wild Card played in. The #1 seed would have home field against the #3 seed, while the #2 seed would have home field against the wild card, the #4 seed.

Great example would be the 1998 AL Playoff field. The #1 seed was the 114-48 Yankees. The 92-70 Red Sox would be the #4 seed against the Indians, who finished 89-73 and the #2 seed. The #3 seed was the Rangers, who finished 88-74.

That's what I thought - thanks!

There are no more tie-breaking games in MLB as of 2022. All ties are resolved by non-game methods.


Prior to 1951, it was possible for a team to win or lose the pennant due to a rained out game on the final day of season.

Say, for example, the Giants and Dodgers are tied heading into the last day of play. The Giants are rained out. If the Dodgers played and won their game, they'd win the pennant by a half-game. If the Dodgers played and lost, the Giants would win the pennant by a half-game.

This was possible because the rules at the time had no provision for the playing of postponed games after the scheduled end of the regular season. It was the prospect of the scenario described above which prompted the AL and NL to change their rules.

This was true for 1994 through 1997 as well, but with the added complication that the match-ups were affected by certain divisions being assigned home field advantage.