Given that the Yankees are currently three games ahead of the Baltimore Orioles in the AL East with 12 games to go for both teams, the Yankees would need at least nine wins/Orioles' losses in order to finish the regular season with the same record as Baltimore. However, in that scenario, it is very likely that Baltimore would hold the tiebreaker.

With no more than seven games separating the top five teams in each league, Major League Baseball's playoff field remains an exercise in fluidity as the regular season winds down. While a handful of division leaders have comfortable leads - or counting down increasingly granular magic numbers to clinch - the wild-card spots and overall seedings are very much up for grabs.