Two tiebreaker games needed to fill out NL playoff picture
Two divisional tiebreaker games will be played Monday after the Chicago Cubs, Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers and Colorado Rockies all won Sunday, leaving the National League Central and West both deadlocked after 162 games.
The Cubs will host the Brewers at 1:05 p.m. ET to decide the Central division champion, while the Rockies will travel to L.A. with the West title on the line starting at 4:09 p.m. ET. Both games will be broadcast on ESPN.
Walker Buehler will start for the Dodgers with German Marquez going for the Rockies. Jose Quintana is likely to start for the Cubs, and Jhoulys Chacin is in line for the Brewers.
The losers of the games will face each other in the NL wild-card game on Tuesday (8 p.m. ET, ESPN), to be hosted by the team from the Central.
Monday's winners will advance directly to the National League Division Series, where the Central champs will begin the five-game series by hosting the wild-card winners, and the West champs will have home-field advantage over the Atlanta Braves, the East champs.
Monday's games will count as Game 163 of the regular season, meaning Milwaukee outfielder Christian Yelich will still have a chance to become the first player to win the Triple Crown in the NL since 1937. Yelich has a comfortable batting average lead at .324, but his 36 home runs trails the Rockies' NolanArenado by one, and his 109 RBIs are two behind Chicago's Javier Baez.
Arenado hit two home runs Sunday as the Rockies beat the Washington Nationals 12-0 to jump ahead of both Yelich and the Cardinals' Matt Carpenter.Arenado also had three RBIs Sunday to give him 109, pulling him into a tie for second place with Yelich.
The Dodgers cruised to a 15-0 win at the San Francisco Giants, forcing the West tiebreaker game as the top two teams have 91-71 records.
In the Central, the Cubs and Brewers are both 95-67, after Chicago beat St. Louis 10-5 and Milwaukee shut out the Detroit Tigers 11-0. Since the winner of the Central game tiebreaker will have the best record in the NL, that team will have home-field advantage through the National League Championship Series.
The American League is much less complicated. The New York Yankees will host the Oakland Athletics in the wild-card game on Wednesday, with the winner going on to face the Boston Red Sox in the AL Division Series, while the Houston Astros will start the other ALDS at home against the Cleveland Indians.
