Quirk in Major League Baseball Tiebreaker Rules Could Produce Surprise Post-Season Result

The addition of a second wild card team to the Major League Baseball playoffs, combined with an unusually large number of close division races, has created a blistering array of possibilities, even though there are, as I write this on Sunday morning, only four days left in the regular season. The possibilities are greatest in the American League where eight teams are still in contention for the three division championships and the two wild card spots, and no team has clinched a place in the post-season.  (In contrast, in the National League, four of the five post-season qualifiers have been established.) Not only is it possible that all three American League Divisions could end with ties for first place, it is also possible that as many as four teams could end up tied for the two wild card positions. On September 9, a seemingly endless list of rules pertaining to playoff tiebreakers was posted on Major League Baseball’s webpage, www.mlb.com (http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20120907&content_id=38029316&vkey=news_mlb_nd&c_id=mlb). The term “playoff game” is a more narrow term in baseball than it is in other professional team sports.  Major League Baseball uses the term “playoff games” to refer only to those extra games required to determine which teams qualify for “post-season” games like the League Championship Series and the World Series. Moreover, it has long been the rule that “playoff games” count as part of the regular season, both in terms of player statistics and team won-lost records.  However, post-season wins and losses and individual player statistics are compiled separately from those of the regular season. For example, in 1959, the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Milwaukee Braves ended the regular season tied for first place in the National League with identical records of 86-68 (in a 154 game season).  The Dodgers then won a best-two-of-three-game playoff by a margin of two games to none.  Consequently, the Dodgers were officially credited with a final won-lost record of 88-68, and the Braves, 86-70.  In addition, all pitching and batting performances in those two games were added into the players’ 1959 totals, although the statistics compiled by Dodger players during the subsequent World Series were not. More recently, in 2007, the Colorado Rockies and the San Diego Padres tied for the then-one NL wild card spot with records of 89-73.  The Rockies defeated the Padres, 9-8, in a one-game playoff, a victory which raised their regular season record to 90-73.  In that game, Rockies left-fielder Matt Holiday went 2-6 with a triple and two rbi’s, which lowered his league-leading batting average from .3397 to .3396, but increased his league leading hit and rbi totals to 216 and 137, respectively.  Holliday’s league-leading totals included statistics from the playoff game. How the application of the “playoff games count as regular season games” might affect the tiebreaker system can be seen in the following example. Assume that the Baltimore Orioles and the New York Yankees both drop their four remaining contests, while Tampa Bay wins its final four games.  Assume also that Texas splits…

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The Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands Dispute

[Update: I recently completed a more extensive analysis on the dispute; that article is available here.]

I’d like to share a couple brief thoughts on the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute, which has intensified pretty dramatically in recent weeks. The islands together comprise only seven square kilometers and have supported virtually no economic activity other than the collection of guano and bird feathers, but China and Japan both vigorously claim them as their own. This disagreement has been intractable for a variety of reasons. One is the economic stakes—sovereignty over the islands will dictate rights to potentially massive oil and gas deposits under the East China Sea, so there is no financial incentive for conciliation. Another reason is historical animosity—having suffered from Japanese colonialism and militarism during much of the first half of the twentieth century, China is particularly keen on defending against what it perceives to be expansionist Japanese territorial claims. Finally, the dispute is intractable for legal reasons, as I hope to illustrate below.

First some historical background: Chinese sailors reportedly used the islands for a number of purposes for centuries, but Japan formally annexed them in 1895 and then, at the end of World War II, transferred administrative authority to the United States. A 1968 study first raised the possibility of extensive oil and gas resources around the islands. Approximately four years later in 1972, China objected to Japanese sovereignty, and the United States returned the islands to Japanese administration. To demonstrate its control, Japan has since leased the islands to private businessmen, built a weather station and heliport, conducted land surveys, and patrolled the surrounding waters. China has consistently objected that these activities are irrelevant, at least in part because the annexation was illegal and Japan never had sovereignty to begin with. (more…)

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This Day in Legal History—September 28, 1918

On September 28, 1918, outside of the French village of Marcoing, British Private Henry Tandley of the 5th Duke of Wellington Regiment came across an escaping wounded German soldier. The encounter took place near the end of the British capture of the village, and thus the military situation, though winding down, was still very much rife with hostilities. The soldier was presumably armed and posed a potential threat to Private Tandley and his fellow infantrymen.

Private Tandley was presented at that moment with a serious ethical question: shoot preemptively in self-defense, not knowing the capability of the German soldier or the extent to which other German soldiers were present, or spare the soldier’s life and let him return to his unit, either to survive or to die in the arms of his own comrades. Private Tandley did not then know that an armistice with Germany would come within a matter of weeks, nor did he know whether the soldier had a wife and children to whom he might return after the war. He knew nothing of this German soldier other than that he was another human being who was injured.

Private Tandley decided to spare the soldier’s life, and the soldier continued on his way, apparently nodding to Tandley in appreciation.

This story is presented in here because, if Tandley’s account is correct, his decision to spare the life of this German soldier changed the course of the 20th century, with vast consequences not only for the law but also for every other aspect of culture and society across much of the world. (more…)

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