White Sox Are One Game Away from Clinching a Playoff Berth--[UPDATED]

As I've been mentioning from time to time, the White Sox haven't exactly been on fire as the season comes to a close. They won tonight, though, and Cleveland lost, so they're currently up by three. However, if the worst comes to pass and they do nothing but lose for the rest of the season, they're assured of, at worst, a tie for the wild card. This is a bit complicated, but the worst-case scenario for the White Sox would necessitate a win tomorrow night for both the Yankees and the Red Sox and then those two teams splitting their final series in such as way as to end up in a tie for the Eastern Division. In that case, those two team would also have the same win/loss records as the White Sox, so the Yanks and BoSox would play a tie-breaker for the division title, and then the loser would play the White Sox in a tie-breaker for the wild card. (However, if the Red Sox lose tomorrow night, no matter what else happens with any other team--even if the Red Sox end up winning their own division anyway--the White Sox clinch their place in the playoffs.)

The sportscasters on NBC's Chicago Channel 5 made the inaccurate claim that if the White Sox win tomorrow night, they'll clinch their division, even if Cleveland sweeps them in the final series and ends up in a tie. No one who made the claim also said they understood how the math would work--Ryan Baker even claimed that, with Cleveland's loss tonight, the White Sox are assured of a division tie, which for reasons he didn't explain, would end up with the title going to the White Sox. I'm sure what the buzz was really about--whether anyone recognized it or not--is that a win tomorrow night, as I explained above, means they've got a spot in the playoffs regardless of what happens with the division title.

Thanks to the generosity of a regular Talk Talk Talk Talk Talk reader, there's a ticket for the first White Sox home playoff game with my name on it. So I'm paying just that little bit more attention to the final stretch.

UPDATE--This is wrong. A win Thursday did clinch the division for the White Sox. Here's why.