And in instances in which two teams from the same division are guaranteed to make the playoffs, MLB does not use a one-game playoff, instead relying on head-to-head records to break the tie.
Am I wrong, or is there a hanging deixis in the last sentence? That "two teams from the same division" seems equally to apply to either of the pairs in the first sentence, and I have no idea what the author is attempting to say. Except that the stupid White Sox clinched the AL Central, for reasons esoteric.
The short version is this: Say the Red Sox, Yanks, and Indians end up 95-67. The Sox and Yanks would have a one-game playoff to determine who gets the division title.
Say the Yanks win:
New York 96-67
Boston 95-68
Cleveland 95-67
Cleveland would be one game ahead of Boston in the loss column and would be the wild card. This is because a division or wildcard playoff count as part of the REGULAR SEASON standings. There is no provision for a situation like this in the current rules, something that MLB, the MLBPA, and fans have known since we went to the three-division alignment in 1994.
The easiest solution would be to not have a division playoff, instead awarding the division pennant to the team with the best head-to-head record, with the second-place team dropping into a wild-card playoff. Unfortunately, this wasn't addressed in the 2002 labor pact, but a "nightmare scenario" where one of the Sox or Yanks gets left out would probably bring about a reasonable solution.
There's been talk, too, that Selig wants to go to a 10-team playoff where two teams would play one game to determine the wild card. There isn't a lot of support for that in the baseball community.