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.