Breaking Down a U.S.-Canada-Colombia Tiebreaker Nightmare

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As of this writing, Mexico leads Canada 10-3 within the ninth inning of its ultimate pool stage sport. If that end result holds, Mexico will win World Baseball Traditional Pool C. (Replace: That end result held.) This night, the U.S. will tackle Colombia to find out who advances because the second-place staff within the group. If Workforce USA wins, it’s easy: each the U.S. and Mexico will end 3-1, with Mexico advancing because the no. 1 seed by advantage of its head-to-head win on Sunday. If Colombia wins, it would end 2-2, as will the U.S. and Canada, with every staff having a head-to-head win over one of many others. That throws issues to the WBC’s splendidly complicated runs-allowed-per-outs-recorded tiebreaker. Making issues extra difficult: As a result of the U.S. beat Canada by mercy rule, all three groups will end the group stage having recorded a distinct variety of outs. That makes the mathematics all of the extra difficult.

Luckily, I did it for you. There’s no assure the sport will really go 9 full innings; along with the potential for further innings, Colombia, the house staff, might win in 9 innings however solely bat eight instances, leaving the U.S. on 45 defensive outs within the related video games moderately than 48. However assuming the U.S. and Colombia every document 27 outs tonight, right here’s who would advance given a specific rating:

USA-Colombia-Canada Tiebreaker Situations

	COLOMBIA SCORE
		0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14
	0	X	USA	USA	USA	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL
U	1	USA	X	USA	USA	USA	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL
S	2	USA	USA	X	USA	USA	USA	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL
A	3	USA	USA	USA	X	USA	USA	USA	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL
	4	USA	USA	USA	USA	X	USA	USA	TBD*	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL
S	5	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	X	USA	USA	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL
C	6	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	X	USA	USA	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL
O	7	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	X	USA	USA	COL	COL	COL	COL	COL
R	8	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	X	USA	USA	COL	COL	COL	COL
E	9	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	X	USA	USA	COL	COL	COL
	10	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	X	USA	CAN	CAN	CAN
	11	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	X	CAN	CAN	CAN
	12	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	X	CAN	CAN
	13	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	X	CAN
	14	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	USA	X

If Colombia beats the U.S. 7-4, these two groups would end with the identical run quotient. In that case, I’m not 100% positive what would occur. Both the tiebreakers would proceed down the road to earned run quotient in video games amongst tied groups (thus far there have been no unearned runs), then batting common, then drawing of heaps; or Colombia would advance by advantage of a head-to-head tiebreaker towards the U.S. The latter case would make extra sense, however the posted WBC rules make reference to “equivalent profitable proportion,” which could preclude resetting the tiebreaker to solely embody two groups. So, uh, let’s simply hope it doesn’t come to that.

Michael is a author at FanGraphs. Beforehand, he was a workers author at The Ringer and D1Baseball, and his work has appeared at Grantland, Baseball Prospectus, The Atlantic, ESPN.com, and numerous ill-remembered Phillies blogs. Observe him on Twitter, for those who should, @MichaelBaumann.

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