I know there are already a couple of MLB/postseason threads, but I wanted to get a distinct answer to this without diverting those discussions.
I belatedly grasped the two-wild-card scenario, and my disappointment with the format wasn’t lessened by having my Giants be the fifth playoff team.
However… the two NL wild-card teams finished with identical records. In a prior year (you know, back in the old days when there was only one wild card), how would this have been resolved? By other rankings such as home victories, or relative standing in their own division (Pittsburgh would have won in both cases)? Or would there have been a one-game playoff to settle the matter?
'Cuz if it’s the latter, I can take at least modest satisfaction with the Giants being in the hunt legitimately. (And that much more pleasure at their brutal, never-say-die home sweep of the Nats. )
I believe there would have been a one-game playoff.
Before the two-wild-card scenario, a tie for the division lead would be determined by a series of tie-breaking criteria (head-to-head, division record, etc.) if the losing team would be the wild card, or by a playoff if not. A tie for the wild card would be resolved by a playoff. Basically, if the loser would be out of the playoffs, a game was played. Now that a division lead is a better result than the wild card, there is always a playoff for the division lead.
fachverwirrt is not verwirrt this time around at least–his answer is correct, there would’ve been a playoff. Happened in 1999 between the Mets and Reds, and probably a couple other times as well, though I can’t think of 'em off the top of my head.
Whether or not a team makes the playoffs cannot be decided by any method other than playing a game. “Tiebreaker” concepts apply only to seeding; to decide in or out, you have to play a game.
[QUOTE=Amateur Barbarian]
So in other words, the NL playoff teams this year were decided by the same process as under the single wild-card team rules, purely through a fluke?
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That is correct. Had the old system applied, exactly the same thing would have happened. The only difference would have been that the home team would have been decided by coin flip, rather than by the tiebreaking rules (Pittsburgh hosted the Wild Card game because they beat the Giants four out of six times during the regular season.)
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