Can the Detroit Tigers catch up with the struggling Minnesota Twins?
Minnesota Star Tribune sportswriter Bobby Nightengale joins Days of Roar to discuss how the struggling Minnesota Twins are helping the Detroit Tigers.
The Detroit Tigers, Minnesota Twins and Kansas City Royals have six games left in this baseball season as they battle for two wild-card playoff spots. The Tigers have one more win than the Twins and are tied with the Royals.
The Seattle Mariners are close behind, but let’s focus on the three American League Central Division rivals who have the best chances at the wild card spots.
If the Tigers win all six games, they will definitely secure a wildcard spot since they are ahead of the Twins.
That’s the simplest scenario, but a six-game winning streak is statistically unlikely, even though the Tigers are playing their last few games against losing teams, including the last three against the historically awful White Sox, who already handed the Tigers the most losses in American League history in 2003.
Without such a winning streak, the playoff scenarios become complicated and chaotic.
If the Twins win one more than the Tigers, the teams finish the season with identical records. Due to a new Major League Baseball tiebreaker, the Twins make the playoffs and the Tigers’ season ends.
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Unless …
The Royals should lose one more game than the Tigers. If you ignore the Twins, the Tigers and Royals are tied through Tuesday. So if the Tigers win one more game than the Royals in this final week, they’re in.
If the Tigers lose one more game than the Twins AND don’t win more games than the Royals, the Twins and Royals are in and the Tigers stay home. (Again, the Mariners, who are one and a half games behind the Tigers and Royals as of Tuesday morning, aren’t out of the race yet, but two of the other contenders would have to largely collapse.)
If they win a wild-card spot, the Tigers would play either Justin Verlander’s Houston Astros, the AL West division winners, or the suddenly familiar Baltimore Orioles, who have all but secured the first wild-card spot. The wild-card round, now a best-of-three series, will be hosted by the higher-seeded team, so the Tigers would be on the road.
They would only get a home playoff game if they advance to the Division Series – which is not unlikely considering that their ace is Tarik Skubal, the best pitcher in the American League.
But this week they’re at home to cap an improbable lightning playoff victory that gave the Tigers the best record in baseball since Aug. 11. Both the Royals and Twins have fallen into slumps while the Tigers have flourished, and both are finishing the season against winning teams.
To recap: The Tigers have the best chance of making a playoff spot. They either need to stay one game ahead of the Twins or win one more game than the Royals in these final six games. If they do that, either the Twins or the Royals will miss the playoffs. Unless something weird happens with the Mariners or something really, really weird happens with the Red Sox or the Rays.
Got it?
