Atlanta Braves and the relevant playoff tie-breakers

Happily, the Braves will not need a Game 163 to decide anything. But it doesn’t mean that they won’t have to worry about tie-breaker issues. Here’s the skinny.

The Atlanta Braves have won the 2018 Nationals League’s Eastern Division title. That sounds really good to say. The best part is that Atlanta can get some players rested and ready for October baseball… unless they want to push for a home-field advantage.

So just in case it comes up, let’s review the tie-breaking scenarios for playoff seeding.

First off, what teams could still tie with Atlanta at season’s end?

Cubs
Brewers
Cardinals (barely)
Dodgers
Rockies
Diamondbacks Not any more!

Yes – at this moment the Braves actually could be involved in a season-ending tie record between any of these clubs… some more likely than others, of course.

The First Rule

Very simple: head-to-head matchups. Here’s the run-down…

Cubs: tie (3-3)
Brewers (advantage MIL: 3-4)
Cardinals (advantage Braves: 4-2)
Dodgers (advantage LAD: 5-2)
Rockies (advantage COL: 5-2)

Now the caveat to this is that Division winners always have the advantage over a Wild Card team – regardless of the records involved. So if the Braves tie with Wild Card teams… that doesn’t matter.

That rule is something you might hear Yankee fans complaining about in the coming weeks should they survive their Wild Card game, but it underscores just how important it is to win a division title.

So what that means is that the Braves lose out on virtually every meaningful tie-breaker scenario.

The one possible exception is the Cubs, and that tie in head-to-head games leads us to the next rule – which is going to require some discussion.

Higher Winning Percentage in intra-division games

Now that’s what it says, but of all the tie-breaker rules, this is the one that doesn’t make sense.

Since the Cubs and Braves tying after Game 162 is the instance that matters, we will use this as the lab experiment.

“Intra-division” means “games played within your own division”. We know this is an accurate statement because the next tie-breaker rule involves intra-league record, which is the entire National League.

But the Cubs play in the NL Central and the Braves in the NL East, so aren’t we comparing apples and oranges, here?

Yes, we are, and this isn’t the first time this point has been raised. From Wikipedia’s treatment of this subject, we have this line, written as an asterisk to this particular rule:

"*all current references in mlb.com website indicate that this rule applies even for teams that are not in the same division."

Braves/Cubs

Oh. Okay, so… how have the Braves and Cubs played against their divisional peers… i.e., the teams they have the most games against?

As of Saturday afternoon…

BRAVES 46-23 vs. East
CUBS 37-32 vs. Central

More from Tomahawk Take

So this isn’t even close: the Braves would beat out the Cubs – if these clubs tie – for seeding advantage. In fact, this margin is so decisive that it has already been clinched by Atlanta here with 7 games still to play.

Right now that margin between Chicago and Atlanta stands at 3 games, pending tonight’s cross-Chicago contest.

So it’s still a bit of a stretch to get there to a tie scenario (and the Cubs still have a not-made-up game vs. Washington that could be involved), but this is the only case in which Atlanta can reasonably come out on top in a tie situation.

Can I get some relief here?. dark. Next

But if it comes up… now you’ll know.

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