The MLB rules are retarded. They state -- as they have for years -- that if two teams tie for the division, that the division title will be determined by a playoff game.
There's one exception though, instituted in the mid-90s. If the two teams have a better record than any second-place team in any other division, then the team with the better head-to-head record wins the division title.
The logic is simple: in this case, both teams are going to the playoffs, since the Wild Card will be won by the other team. So why play a playoff game -- wasting valuable energy for the pitchers -- to merely determine seeding?
But it's not merely seeding, it's also the division championship on the line, and to declare one team the winner of a championship based an arbitrary tiebreaker, especially when it had not been done that way ever before, is ridiculous.
Of course, this happens in other sports. But baseball is not other sports. It has more history and the division title holds more significance.
The Red Sox are not the only team in baseball history to have the best record in the division and not be declared the division champs. The 2001 St. Louis Cardinals, like the Red Sox, had the second best record in the league, and tied for the best in the division, but lost the head-to-head tiebreaker: their fans call that year's team the "co-division champs."
So screw it, I am declaring the Sox the champs, and hopefully the Sox management has the cajones to assert the Sox as the champs, too.
