Baseball's Triad of Chaos: Bring it on

While last year’s addition of the second wild card spot revamped the pennant race, this year we could see an improbable three team round robin that should scramble the equilibrium.

With the Tampa Bay Rays, Texas Rangers, and Cleveland Indians all separated in the wild card standings by a game, it makes sense that there are three teams fighting for two spots.

But if they all finish with the same regular season record, one team could opt to be team C as opposed to team A in the tiebreaker.

Confused yet? Don’t worry that’s normal. Here is how the three way tie would be unknotted.

Hypothetically if the Rangers, Indians and Rays all finish with the same record the team with the best record against the other potential wild card opponents will host the team with the second best record out of the three.

In laments terms this means the Cleveland Indians would host the Tampa Bay Rays on Monday. These are teams A and B.

This is because Cleveland went a combined 7-5 against the Rays and Rangers this year. Tampa Bay went a combined 7-6 against the Rangers and Indians this year, so they are team B.

Let’s say for all intents and purposes that the Rays go on the road, get a strong performance from David Price at the Jake and take the win from a jilted Cleveland Indians team.

This means that Tampa Bay gets to fly home to Saint Petersburg and host either the Indians or Rangers on Wednesday.

By (hypothetically) beating Cleveland, the Rays secure their claim to the first of two wild card slots and get to be the home team for the Rangers/ Indians showdown.

But before getting to Wednesday we have to hop back in the Delorean and travel back to Tuesday where the Texas Rangers would host the Cleveland Indians for the right to be the second wild card team.

The Rangers have the advantage of home field, yet Cleveland cancels that out by getting two shots to clinch the final wildcard slot as opposed to Texas’ one.

Regardless of the winner of Texas and Cleveland, the winner of the Tuesday night game will be the second wild card team. The second wild card team will have to fly out to Tampa and play the Rays because they became the first wild card team by winning.

Then everything goes back to the regular one game play in that did so well last year.

In hindsight the process is not especially confusing and this added wrinkle of three-teams-fight-for-two-spots-to-turn-around-and-fight-for-one-spot makes things far more interesting.

Imagine the spectacle of the oft underrated Rays team that could beat Cleveland on Monday and host a play in game that Wednesday.

Imagine being the Texas Rangers stumbling into a home game playoff atmosphere with a chance to end someone’s season in Arlington.

Or you could be the Cleveland Indians. By beating Tampa Bay and sending your good vibes over to help Texas win, you could knock out Tampa Bay and avoid playoff baseball in that dungeon that the Rays call a ballpark.

We could see three teams fighting for two spots to fight for one spot; let the chaos reign.