It's the final week of the regular season, and most of the NL playoff picture is pretty well settled, with all three division winners and their seeds set in stone.
As for the Wild Card, the Cubs and Padres both secured postseason berths on Thursday. The Phillies have a two-game lead over the only other team that remains in contention -- the D-backs, whose postseason odds, per FanGraphs, sit at 11.1% entering Friday.
But not everything is close to being decided. And that's because -- not even including a comeback by Arizona -- the Cubs, Padres and Phillies could still finish in any order -- including a potential three-way tie.
Who would win a three-way tie for the National League Wild Card?
You can read in full about the postseason tiebreaker rules right here, but the key point is that in ties between three teams …
- If the three clubs do NOT have identical records against one another, AND
- Club 1 has a better record against Clubs 2 and 3, THEN
- Club 1 qualifies
There are more complicated tiebreaker rules for other situations, but fortunately, this one is simple -- relatively speaking.
That’s because the Cubs dominated their season series against both teams. They went 5-1 against the Padres and 6-1 against the Phillies. That means, in a theoretical three-way tie for the three Wild Card spots, the Cubs would earn the No. 4 seed. That, in turn, would give them home-field advantage for each game of the Wild Card Series against the No. 5 seed.
With that settled, this simply turns into a regular, old two-team tie for the final two spots. That comes down to head-to-head record, and here we have another lopsided season series. The Phillies went 6-0 against the Padres, sweeping a pair of three-game series between May 25-June 4.
That leaves us with this arrangement if there's a three-way tie for the NL Wild Card:
- Cubs: No. 4 seed, host Phillies in Wild Card Series
- Phillies: No. 5 seed, play at Cubs in Wild Card Series
- Padres: No. 6 seed, play at No. 3 seed Braves in Wild Card Series
If only two of those three teams end up tied, then it’s relatively simple, as we’ve already noted.
- The Cubs would win a head-to-head tiebreaker over the Phillies or Padres.
- The Phillies would win a head-to-head tiebreaker over the Padres.
Now we just have to see how the next three days play out.