MLB playoff scenarios: What’s at stake Sunday as Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Mariners fight for wild card
Written by luck on October 3, 2021
The final day of the 2021 MLB regular season has arrived. Well, maybe. It is possible — very possible, in fact — a tiebreaker game or two (or three!) will be required Monday, and tiebreaker games are considered regular-season games. There is a very real chance the regular season will extend into Monday.
Eight of the 10 postseason spots are accounted for. The only two open spots are the two American League wild-card spots, though the NL West race is undecided as well. There are six total teams involved in those races and, sadly, none are playing head-to-head this weekend. Everyone has to scoreboard watch, and three of those six clubs need help from other teams.
Here’s a look at everything on the line Sunday, and how the various races can be decided.
Current postseason bracket
Sunday’s relevant games
Remember, all games begin at 3 p.m. ET on Sunday. A few years ago MLB moved all games on the final day to the same start time to maximize drama. It is one of the best things MLB has done in recent years, truly.
NL West
Let’s get the easy stuff out of the way first. The Giants (106-55) are one game up on the Dodgers (105-56) and will clinch the NL West title with a win over the Padres or a Dodgers loss to the Brewers. Either works. If the Dodgers win and the Giants lose, the two clubs will play a Game 163 tiebreaker in San Francisco on Monday. The winner gets the NL West title and the loser hosts the Cardinals in the Wild Card Game. Got it? Good. Moving on.
AL wild card
This is where the action is. The Blue Jays, Mariners, Red Sox, and Yankees are alive in the American League wild card race, and four teams still alive means there are 16 possible outcomes Sunday, including three- and four-team ties. It could be chaos. Here are all those outcomes:
W | W | W | W | Red Sox | Yankees |
W | W | W | L | Red Sox | Yankees |
W | W | L | W | Red Sox | Yankees |
W | W | L | L | Red Sox | Yankees |
W | L | W | W | Yankees | BOS/SEA/TOR tie |
W | L | W | L | Yankees | BOS/TOR tie |
W | L | L | W | Yankees | BOS/SEA tie |
W | L | L | L | Yankees | Red Sox |
L | W | W | W | Red Sox | NYY/SEA/TOR tie |
L | W | W | L | Red Sox | NYY/TOR tie |
L | W | L | W | Red Sox | NYY/SEA tie |
L | W | L | L | Red Sox | Yankees |
L | L | L | L | Red Sox | Yankees |
L | L | W | L | BOS/NYY/TOR tie | |
L | L | L | W | BOS/NYY/SEA tie | |
L | L | W | W | BOS/NYY/SEA/TOR tie | |
Sixteen possible outcomes, seven resulting in Yankees vs. Red Sox in the Wild Card Game, and nine resulting in some sort of tiebreaker scenario. Here’s how all the tiebreakers work. It should be noted three-team ties are a little more chaotic than the big four-team tie. With a four-team tie, the clubs get paired off and play two tiebreaker games, and the winners are the wild card teams. With a three-team tie, there’s a little mini-tournament in which the first tiebreaker game determines who plays in the second tiebreaker game.
Note that the best the Blue Jays and Mariners can do Sunday is force a Game 163 tiebreaker Monday. They can not clinch a wild-card spot outright on the season’s final day. If the AL wild-card race is decided Sunday, it means Yankees vs. Red Sox in the Wild Card Game. Any other scenario involves playing into Monday.
No. 1 pick in 2022
The race to the bottom is also on the line Sunday. For a while there it looked like the Diamondbacks had the No. 1 pick in the 2022 draft locked up, then it looked like the Orioles were going to run away with it, and now it’s down to the last day. The D-Backs (51-110) have a one-game “lead” over the O’s (52-109) and can clinch the No. 1 pick in next year’s draft with a loss to the Rockies or an Orioles win over the Blue Jays on Sunday.
If the Orioles lose and the D-Backs win, they’d finish with identical records, and Baltimore would get the No. 1 pick next year because they had the worse record in 2019 (54-108 to 85-77). The first tiebreaker is 2020 records, but both clubs went 25-35 last year, so we go back to 2019, and the O’s hold that tiebreaker. Outfielder Elijah Green, a possible generational talent, is the early favorite to be the No. 1 pick in next year’s draft.
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