Baseball Musings: Massive Tie Scenario

September 28, 2007

Massive Tie Scenario

It's a final in Los Angeles as the Rockies defeat the Dodgers 10-4. With the Rockies winning tonight, they are two games behind the Arizona Diamondbacks going into a three game series. That means it's impossible for the two teams to finish even, killing the chance for a five way tie. However, four way ties are still possible.

There are two possibilities that lead to three days of playoffs:

Team	Record
Rockies	3-0
Phillies	2-1
Mets	2-1
Padres	1-2
Diamondbacks	0-3

In this case, the Rockies finish first in the NL West with ninety wins, while the four other teams are tied at eighty nine. The Mets and Phillies hold a one game playoff in Philadelphia, then the loser joins San Diego and Arizona in a two day, two game wild card tournament. This also works if the Rockies go 2-1. In that case, Arizona wins the division, and the Rockies take the Diamondbacks' place in the Wild Card tournament.

The other four way tie possibility goes like this:

Team	Record
Rockies	3-0
Phillies	3-0
Mets	3-0
Padres	2-1
Diamondbacks	0-3

In this case, the Rockies, Phillies, Mets and Padres are all tied, but the Diamondbacks get no chance to advance. There would be two playoff games on Monday for the division championship, then the two losers meet on Tuesday to determine the Wild Card winner.

I like the first four-way tie better, because it keeps more teams involved and takes longer to sort out. Not only does it have a higher probability of happening, but it's possible for the Brewers to tie the Cubs as well! It's also possible that the Mets, Phillies, Rockies and Padres all sweep, which would cause a three-way tie for the Wild Card between the Mets, Phillies and Rockies, also requiring a two-day playoff. In that one, the Mets and Phillies play for the NL East title in Philadelphia, with the loser playing Colorado the next day. The Phillies would play in Denver, but we don't know where New York would play because they didn't include the Mets in the tie-breaker flip for the Wild Card!

It's going to be a fun weekend. One nice thing, no matter what happens tomorrow, the better four way tie stays in play.

Correction: Fixed the result of the four team sweep. It wasn't a three-way tie for the wild card, it was an NL East playoff, then a wild card playoff, although for all intents and purposes, Colorado gets the Monday off.

Update: There was a coin toss yesterday.

MLB flipped a coin yesterday to decide the host of more possible two-team wild-card tiebreaker games on Monday. The Mets won two out of three. They would host the Padres or the Diamondbacks. But if the Mets have to face the Rockies, they would have to fly to Denver.

Posted by David Pinto at 01:30 AM | Division Races | TrackBack (0)

Comments

I didn't notice this myself, but Nate Silver just put up a post on Unfiltered noticing that it's impossible for there to be a five-way tie. Arizona is two games ahead of the Rockies, and they play each other this weekend, so there's no way Colorado can make up exactly two games.

Posted by: Vegas Watch at September 28, 2007 02:44 AM

Sorry, disregard everything I just said, you're completely right in everything you wrote. It's late...

Posted by: Vegas Watch at September 28, 2007 02:46 AM

"It's also possible that the Mets, Phillies, Rockies and Padres all sweep, which would cause a three-way tie for the Wild Card between the Mets, Phillies and Rockies, also requiring a two-day playoff. In that one, Colorado would likely take day one off, and play at the winner of the Mets-Phillies game which would be in CPB."

Or, the Mets and Phillies would play for the NL East, and the loser would play Colorado for the WC.

I know, it's late... ;-)

Posted by: R.J. at September 28, 2007 03:24 AM

The Phillies won the regular season series vs the Mets, doesn't that means that if they are tied on sunday night the twins automatically win the division?

Posted by: Pete at September 28, 2007 07:35 AM

*Phillies, not Twins.

Posted by: Pete at September 28, 2007 07:36 AM

that head to head for the season only ocmes into play if both teams are in the playoffs. If mets and Phils tie and neither one has the wild card locked up then they play one game in philly to see who wins

Posted by: Mark at September 28, 2007 07:57 AM

What if Phi, NYM, COL go 1-2 and SAN goes 0-3, then PHI-NYM tie for NL East, ARI wins NL West, 3 teams tied at 88 wins for wild card, also sounds like a three day playoff...

Posted by: Albatross at September 28, 2007 10:31 AM

Even more fun is calculating out the chances of all this (well if you are a statistics geek anyway). On the Baseball prospectus site they run a million run Monte Carlo sim of the remaining season and come up with a 6.7% chance of a 4 way tie, which is amazing. (ignores starting pitching, so the big assumption is that each game in the remaining 3-game sets have equal win/loss probabilities). I actually ran an explicit solution using their team evaluations and got the following :

4 - way tie (any type) 6.7%
3 - way tie (any type, forcing playoff) 23.2%
2 -way tie (one or more forcing playoff) 23.6%

which nets a little over a 50% chance of at least one game on Monday - including a potential Cubs-Brewers game, which is independent of the other cases. (I am ignoring in the above any ties that do not force a playoff - the odds of at least one tie somewhere in the mix are pushing 70%)

For those who are curious, the per game win probs for this are :
Mets 62.5%
Phils 62.9%
Rocks 60.5%
Pads 47.3%
Dbacks 39.5%
a big contributor to the multi-tie chances is that the Rockies have a good chance (65%) to win 2 or more games at home this weekend, which puts one team each at 90 and 89 wins, with the Phils and Mets also in the same range to get to at least 89. The BP system rates the Rockies above the Dbacks and throws a home field on top of it. If you force the series back to 50/50 the multiple tie numbers drop a couple of percent.

Posted by: phwest at September 28, 2007 01:02 PM