With two games remaining the Major Baseball League (MBL) could have a mess determining the very important one seed in each conference for the 2012 tournament. While most people are fixed on the wild cards the much more important one seed has gotten almost no attention.
National Conference wins:
Washington 96
Cincinnati 96
American Conference wins:
East:
Yankees 93
Baltimore 92
West:
Texas 93
Oakland 92
On the off chance that this is determined by head to head record:
Washington 5
Cincinnati 2
Washington would and should be the one seed in the National Conference.
Since Texas and Oakland are playing each other they cannot end in a tie for the West division. Here are their possible win totals:
Texas: 93, 94, 95
Oakland: 92, 93, 94
Possible win totals for the East teams:
Yankees: 93, 94, 95
Baltimore: 92, 93, 94
Since they are not playing each other they could end in a tie for the East division with either 93 or 94 wins.
That means that three teams could tie with either 93 or 94 wins: Yankees, Baltimore and either Texas or Oakland.
Yankees and Baltimore tied at 9-9.
Yankees are 4-3 over Texas.
Texas is 5-2 over Baltimore.
So, which AC team would be the one seed and how is that determined? Commissioner Selig, are you there? I'm guessing that the Yankees and Baltimore would be required to play that ridiculous extra regular season game to decide the division winner of the East. That would break the tie with the West division leader and leave the East leader with one more win and the one seed. Which means that Selig and the MBL stumbled into a game that would have real meaning and the AC one seed would be determined on the field. Go figure.
And do the managers of these four teams realize this possibility? Would Yankee manager Joe Girardi have left his ace CC Sabathia in the game for eight innings last night after the Yankees had scored nine runs in the second for a 9-0 lead if Girardi thought he might need Sabathia to beat Baltimore, not just for the division lead, but for the one seed? I'm guessing that the managers are pretty much oblivious to this stuff and will remain so for at least the next several seasons.
While watching last night's Yankee game and even without thinking about this I was considering whether Girardi should pull Sabathia immediately after the nine run second or at least after five innings to keep him fresh for a possible wild card game or a division tie breaker. I had not yet considered that the Yankees could be playing an extra game for the one seed, which I have been touting from the beginning as the real prize in this new tournament format.
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