I looked at the Yankees, Twins, and Rays remaining schedules and I could see them all finishing about 98-64 with a three way tie for the best record in baseball. The NL could hypothetically have all four playoff teams with the same record. At least one team that is currently within 2 games of the best record in the NL will miss the playoffs since there are five of those teams.
"It's a Yankee game, it can't possibly come in under 3 hours."
Closest I've found in the pre-division era was in 1908:
Cubs 99-55
Giants 98-56
Pirates 98-56
This was the "Merkle boner" race. All 3 NL contenders had better records than the AL champ Detroit Tigers (90-63).
In 1964, the AL contenders:
Yankees 99-63
White Sox 98-64
Orioles 97-65
all better than NL champ St. Louis (92-70).
Haven't gotten around to tackling the divisional era yet. (Obviously it would have been impossible in the pre-division era because the playoff, when needed, counted toward regular season, but I wanted to see how close anyone had gotten.)
I do not belive there has been a 3-way tie yet. There was a posibility a while ago and forced them to look at their idiodic tie breaker at the time and change it to a more equitable one if I recall.
It was something like the NL Central runner up / NL west 2 / NL west 2 almost finished with the same record. Under the old rules the 2 NL West teams would have played for the division and the loser would have finished a half game behind the NL central team for the wild card under the theory that the 163rd game was a regular season game. Under the revised rules loser of NL west would play one game for WC also.
I know that isn't exactly on point for 3 teams tying for best record but that's the closest I have.
Baseball is life;
the rest is just details.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote