The Cleveland Guardians and Chicago White Sox experienced similar celebrations on Thursday.
Both were on the road, and both got to enjoy the fact that they had clinched playoff berths.
The White Sox did it first, a 9-1 afternoon victory in Kansas City over the Royals to go to the postseason after consecutive seasons with triple-digit losses.
Then it was the Guardians in the evening. Angel Martinez hit a home run inside Pesky Pole at Fenway Park that wouldn’t have been a home run at any other stadium, and it was enough in a 1-0 Cleveland win.
The AL Central Division rivals now find themselves in an interesting spot. They both know they’re in the playoffs. They don’t know yet if they’ve won the division.
Both have three games to go, and the Guardians hold a one-game lead.
Cleveland is now in Kansas City itself for a three-game series with the Royals.
The White Sox close against the Colorado Rockies for three games.
One team is going to be the AL Central champ, and the other will be the third-and-final Wild Card in the American League.
There could be a huge difference.
AL Central Champ Gets First-Round Bye
The key to all of this is the first-round bye waiting at the end of the tunnel for one of these teams.
The division winners with the two-best records in each of the leagues get a bye into the Divisional Round and skip the Wild Card Round.
The third-best division winner, and the three Wild Card teams, duke it out in best-of-three opening series.
In this case, though, the AL West’s Houston Astros and Texas Rangers can’t catch the Guardians or White Sox in their record.
That means that whichever team wins the AL Central Division gets a first-round bye.
Whoever loses the division will almost certainly hit the road for a best-of-three series against whichever team wins the AL West Division — in what’ll be a 3-seed (AL West champ) against 6-seed (final Wild Card team).
While a bye comes with slightly odd vibes because it’s unlike other experiences throughout the season’s schedule, it still has to be preferred. It’s less games a team needs to win to win the whole shabang. It also allows players to rest up and pitchers to get lined up for which days they’ll be called upon.
Guardians-White Sox Tiebreaker
There’s one other thing to note here. If the teams finish with the same record, the White Sox hold the tiebreaker, so they would win the division in that scenario.
The tiebreaker is head-to-head record over the course of the regular season, and the White Sox won seven games versus the Guardians, who won six.
That means that Cleveland needs to at least stay even with what Chicago does in the final weekend to ensure the first-round bye belongs to the Guardians.
AL Central First-Round Bye: Why Guardians, White Sox Still Want To Win Division