MLB should not count tiebreaker games as part of regular season
Major League Baseball has two division tiebreakers on Monday, which should make for an exciting day of action for fans. There’s only one problem with the way they’re staged: they’re counted as regular season games.
That means that the result of the NL Central and NL West tiebreakers will be added to the records of the teams involved. It also means all stats accumulated in the games will count toward regular season numbers, and that’s not fair for a variety of reasons.
MLB’s regular season is 162 games for every team, and nothing about the 163rd game is normal. That standard should remain in place across all 30 clubs. Not even the league treats tiebreakers like regular season in anything but name only. Even though it’s formally a regular season game, they use the six umpire setup that is also used for postseason games. They can often be one-game elimination matchups, meaning managers treat them as postseason games as well. Though neither of Monday’s games will see the loser eliminated, the stakes remain high, as all four teams would much prefer the security of a best-of-five division series to the one-game wildcard contest. Players look at them differently as well, judging by one Milwaukee Brewer’s comments ahead of the NL Central tiebreaker game.
It’s also unfair that teams involved can use their full, expanded September rosters. It certainly offers managers more flexibility, but it doesn’t seem right that a little-used pinch runner who wouldn’t make the postseason roster or aggressive mixing and matching of relievers should help determine the outcome of a one-and-done tiebreaker game.
This year’s tiebreaker has a potentially serious complication. Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Christian Yelich is very much involved in a Triple Crown chase, and could actually win it with a home run and two RBIs against the Chicago Cubs, assuming no one else adds to their totals. But will a potential Yelich Triple Crown be viewed as legitimate if he has a bonus regular season game to do it? Some people will certainly argue that it detracts from the accomplishment, which isn’t terribly fair to him after an MVP-caliber season.
Since the institution of one-game wildcard playoffs, MLB has simply tracked the stats accumulated in that game as a separate playoff game. There is no reason they couldn’t do the same with tiebreaker games. Treating them like normal regular season games statistically is laughable when the teams and players — and the league itself — doesn’t even do so in any other way.
