Baseball: two tiebreakers in one day!

The winning teams will be division champs. The losing teams will have to play each other in another one-game showdown!

One of these four solid teams – the one that loses two games in a row – will not make it to the division series.

Yelich did not get his triple crown. In the final stats, he led the league in batting average, missed by one in homers, missed by two in RBI. So close!

HOWEVER, as two commenters reminded me, the division playoff game is considered part of the regular season, so Yelich will get one more shot at a big game for all the marbles. (His chief competitors, Baez, Story and Arenado, will also get an additional game.)

Thanks for the reminder guys. I can still remember a year from my childhood when Ernie Banks lost the NL homer crown because Eddie Mathews got to play in a playoff. In those days the NL used a three-game tie-breaker and Eddie hit his final homer in the last of those three games (a 12-inning thriller), thus beating Mr. Cub by one dinger.

J.D. Martinez had a similar result in the AL: first in RBI, second in average, second in HR. (And he’s not even the best hitter on his own team! Mookie Betts beat him in OPS, 1.078 to 1.031. Quite a 1-2 punch!)

Neither Betts nor Martinez led the league in OPS. That was, as usual, the amazing Mike Trout, who has now won that category in three of the past four seasons.

 

2 thoughts on “Baseball: two tiebreakers in one day!

  1. I was just about to mention that same thing — Yelich gets to play a 163rd game and if he had a good day at the plate could still get the triple crown. Mind you, unfortunately for him, his rivals are also playing game 163!

    https://www.mlb.com/news/mlb-playoff-picture-update/c-293413208

    “The regular-season designation also gives Brewers star Christian Yelich one more opportunity to add to his run at the NL Triple Crown.

    Yelich, the league’s leader in batting average, is tied with Matt Carpenter and Trevor Story for second in the NL with 36 homers, one behind Colorado’s Nolan Arenado, who hit two on Sunday to bring his total to 37. Yelich is also two RBIs behind Chicago’s Javier Baez. Of course, Baez, Story and Arenado are also playing on Monday, so they will also be able to add to their totals. ”

    Pretty cool!

  2. if you read the leagues comments mondays games will count towards that so theres still a chance to get triple crown wild card games will not count

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