By: TJ Hartnett

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

Well, here we are again. In what seems like an increasingly annual tradition, the Tampa Bay Rays are making a run at the MLB playoffs.

Indeed, it feels like I’m writing an article about the unexpected contention and postseason push of that love-able overlooked and under-dogged Rays every September.

This is no different (the Rays are over 90 wins with a week to play and are currently tied for the second American League Wild Card spot) but there are a few extra wrinkles this year. Particularly, how close the three-team Wild Card race is in the junior circuit this year.

Entering the second to last weekend of the regular season, Tampa Bay is tied with the Cleveland Indians for the second Wild Card slot, two games behind the Oakland A’s.

All three clubs are on good-to-great tears right now, with Oakland in particular smoking hot, having won 9 of their last 10 contests.

With three teams so closely competing for two postseason berths, there are a number of different ways this could shake out for Tampa Bay.

The simplest (and, assumedly, preferred by the team) assurance of a longer season is for the Rays to win one of the two spots outright. They get that one-game Wild Card playoff and they’re off to the races.

Tying with either Oakland and/or Cleveland (and/or Minnesota, which is mathematically still possible) is where things get complicated and interesting.

If one team were to fall off and the Rays tied with, say, Oakland, then whoever won the season series would be the host team in the Wild Card Game (Tampa would visit the A’s in this scenario, having lost the season series 3-4). That one is fairly simple as well.

The real fun begins when you think of the likelihood that two teams end up tied for the second Wild Card spot.

If Tampa and Cleveland end the season dead even but still behind Oakland, they would play a one-game play-in contest (which Tampa would host, as they won the season against the Indians 6-1), the winner of which would go on to the Wild Card Game in Oakland.

If all three teams have identical records on Sunday, things get very tricky. Oakland, having the highest winning percentage against the two other teams, would get to choose to be designated Team A, Team B, or Team C. Tampa, having the next highest winning percentage, would choose between the remaining to designations, and Cleveland would be assigned the remainder.

Team A would play Team B, with the winner moving on to the Wild Card Game. The loser of that game would then play Team C for the second Wild Card spot.

The question then becomes: what would Oakland prefer? Team A gets two chances, sure, but Team C gets a day off and wouldn’t need to prepare for the possibility of three straight days of must-win games (four, really, counting what is sure to be an intense final day of the season that leads to this mess).

Tampa, getting to choose second in this scenario, makes essentially the same choice: choose designation B and give yourself the chance for redemption if they lose the first game; or designation C, where they could potentially line up the likes of Charlie Morton to carry the burden of the season.

I’ve always been a supporter of the second Wild Card and the implementation of the one-and-done Wild Card Game.

It’s like having a pair of Game 7s to kick off the postseason every year. This year, with a tightly contested race for the AL Wild Card spots, we’ve got a possibility of seeing four such games.

That’s probably not the way the Rays would like things to shake out, but as a baseball fan, it’s hard to root against it.