For large swaths of the season’s second half, it has seemed no National League team aspires to claim a wild-card playoff spot. If that’s true, then the three dithering contenders woke up Wednesday morning at an ideal impasse.  The New York Mets, San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals enter the final 11 games of the year with identical 81-70 records, in a three-way tie for two wild-card berths. They have taken divergent, wayward routes to reach the same spot, and they will begin a sprint to the finish with precisely nothing settled, with no team assured of October even if the season ended this second.  In the five seasons since MLB implemented the second wild card, only once — in 2013, when the Rays and Rangers did it — have two teams tied for the second wild card. Never have three teams finished 162 games deadlocked for two spots. If the Mets, Giants and Cardinals remain tied at the end of the season, it would lead to a wonderfully chaotic tiebreak scenario.  We’ll explain how this happens later. Based on current results, this is what would happen in a Giants-Cardinals-Mets tie:  The Cardinals would host the Mets on Monday, Oct. 3, the day after the final day of the regular season. The winner would be declared the first wild card. The loser would fly to San Francisco to play the Giants on Oct. 4. The winner of that game would be declared the winner of the second wild card. On Oct. 5, the first wild card would host the second wild card for the right to play the Chicago Cubs in a best-of-five National League Division Series.  The zaniest possible travel schedule belongs to the Mets. They could play in Philadelphia on Sunday, St. Louis on Monday, San Francisco on Tuesday, back in St. Louis on Wednesday and Chicago on Friday. That would be six days, four flights, four cities and five games, all with massive stakes.  One other note: If the Mets were to beat the Cardinals in St. Louis, and then the Cardinals were to beat the Giants in San Francisco, the wild-card game would be played in New York, because the Mets would have become the top-ranked wild card. Which means the Cardinals could play games in St. Louis, San Francisco and New York in three consecutive days, necessitating a cross-country flight for the last one.  Here is the explanation for how MLB determines this kind of tiebreaker:  The first task is to seed the teams, and by that seeding teams get to choose their designation – Club A, Club B or Club C. The top-seeded team gets to choose its designation, followed by the second-seeded team.  The first tiebreaker in seeding is how the teams fared head-to-head-to-head. The breakdown:  The Mets and Cardinals come out even at 7-6 in the three-team pileup, with the Giants at 6-8. The Mets and Cardinals move to the next tiebreaker: record in intra-divisional games.  The Mets are 33-32 against the NL East, and the Cardinals are 36-30 against the NL Central. Therefore, the Cardinals would earn the top seed and get to pick their designation.  This is how the schedule works, in MLB’s words: “After Clubs have been assigned their A, B and C designations, Club A would host Club B. The winner of the game would be declared one Wild Card winner. Club C would then host the loser of the game between Club A and Club B to determine the second Wild Card Club.”  In other words, there are three games played to determine the ultimate entrant into the National League Division Series.  It’s safe to assume the Cardinals would choose to be Club A, which gives them a home game and two shots to gain entry. The Mets would presumably follow by choosing to be Club B – having two chances to win on the road is still better than one chance to win at home.  The Cubs are surely rooting for this scenario, for a beleaguered team to shamble into Wrigley Field for the NLDS. And you know what? The rest of should be rooting for it, too. Mayhem is too much fun not to.  *This post has been updated to reflect an error. It previously stated two teams had never before tied for the second wild card.
MLB's tiebreak system to determine two wild cards in a three-team pile-up would be chaotic, convoluted and awesome.