How is the home field determined in MLB playoff tiebreaker games?

Asked by hoopski (49

) October 6th, 2009

This afternoon, the Minnesota Twins and Detroit Tigers will play a tiebreaker game for the last spot in the MLB playoffs. It looks like the game is going to be played at the Metrodome in Minneapolis.

How did the Twins win home-field advantage? Was a coin flipped or is based on some regular season statistic? Since there aren’t games at any other ballpark today, wouldn’t it be more fair to play at a neutral location?

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4 Answers

The overall season series between the two was won by the Twins, therefore they get to have home field advantage.

J0E (13172

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This is the first year they’re not using a coin flip to determine home-field advantage:

“The custom had always been to flip coins throughout September to determine which teams might host a possible one-game playoff. But now that host will be decided by a series of on-field tiebreakers, beginning with head-to-head records. If that’s tied, the next is highest winning percentage within your own division, followed by the highest winning percentage for each team in intraleague play during the second half of the season.”

Source: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20090917&content_id=7018116

sferik (6121

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P.S. GO TIGERS!

J0E (13172

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