What happens if 3 (or more) teams tie for a playoff spot?

Baseball’s wild-card races, though they have been truly indicative of the word “wild” this season, appear nearly wrapped up with all clubs having six games remaining.

It is not inconceivable, therefore, that the Cardinals, Brewers and Dodgers could be tied for the NL’s second wild-card spot after Sunday’s action, if three sweeps take place.

ESPN’s Jayson Stark examines what would happen if three or four of these teams tied for the three spots in question, and the results aren’t pretty. There’s quite a bit of detail in Stark’s article, too much to quote at length from here, but the gist of it is this: because two of those teams are located on the East Coast and the other two are on the West Coast, most of the scenarios involved would have a team that wins one of these spots likely having to make cross-country flights on consecutive days, possibly playing in the East one day, the West the next, and then back to the East to play the third day.

Oh, what the heck. It’s long, but here’s one of the possible scenarios, a four-way tie:

This season has produced tight wild-card races in both leagues. But because extra wild cards, and thus two wild-card play-in games, were added to the schedule after it was already released, that leaves just one day to play off any potential ties.

The result, Stark says, is that division series could be pushed back from their already-tight schedule — and that’s not even taking into account the possibility of a three-way tie. Consider this scenario:

Major League Baseball’s postseason schedule, announced Thursday, leaves very little margin for any unusual event — either weather, or a multiple-team tie for the two wild-card spots. For the latter event, baseball has allowed just one day between the end of the regular season (Oct. 3) and the date planned for the two wild-card play-in games (Oct. 5).

Based on these tweets from Jon Morosi, a multi-team tie for the wild-card spots would mess up that tight schedule:

Earlier this week, I wrote about the possibility that multiple teams could tie for the AL wild card and what that might do to the postseason schedule.

Thursday, MLB released the official postseason schedule and they’re asking for schedule trouble:

As of Sunday morning, with just about one-third of the season remaining, the American League wild-card race stood this way:

Five teams within 1½ games of the two spots, currently held by the A’s and Angels, that will meet in the American League wild-card play-in game on October 5. Here, however, is a potential problem: