MLB playoffs are complicated: Here's how Detroit Tigers can clinch wild-card spot

The Detroit Tigers, Minnesota Twins and Kansas City Royals have six games left this baseball season and are bunched in a fight 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 are most likely to win the wild card spots.

If the Tigers win all six games, because they are ahead of the Twins, they secure a wild card spot no matter what.

That’s the simplest scenario, but a six-game winning streak is statistically unlikely despite the fact that the Tigers’ final games are against losing teams, including the last three against the historically horrible White Sox, who already let the 2003 Tigers off the hook for most losses in American League history.

Barring such a win streak, the playoff scenarios get complicated and messy.

If the Twins win one more than the Tigers, the teams finish with identical records. By virtue of a new Major League Baseball tiebreaker based on head-to-head records through the year, the Twins make the playoffs and the Tigers’ season ends.

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Unless …

The Royals were to lose one more than the Tigers. Setting the Twins aside, the Tigers and Royals are tied right entering Tuesday. So if the Tigers win one more than the Royals in this last week, they are in.

If the Tigers were to lose one more than the Twins AND don’t win one more than the Royals, the Twins and Royals are in and the Tigers stay home. (Again, the Mariners, on Tuesday morning a game and a half behind the Tigers and Royals, are not out of it, but would need two of the other contenders to mostly 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 locked up the top wild-card spot. The wild-card round, which is now a best two-of-three series, is hosted by the higher-seeded team, so the Tigers would be on the road.

They would get a home playoff game only if they advance to the division series – which given that their ace is Tarik Skubal, the top pitcher in the American League, would not be improbable.

But they are home this week to cap an improbable blitz to the playoffs that has left the Tigers with the best record in baseball since Aug. 11. Both the Royals and Twins have slumped as the Tigers have surged and both finish the season against winning teams.

Let’s recap: The Tigers have the inside track for a playoff spot. They must either stay one game ahead of the Twins or must win one more game out of these last six than the Royals. If they do, either the Twins or Royals will miss the postseason. Unless something weird happens involving the Mariners, or something really, really weird with the Red Sox or Rays.

Got it?

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: MLB playoffs are complicated: Here's how Detroit Tigers can clinch wild-card spot