This story was excerpted from Jason Beck’s Tigers Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

The Tigers enter tonight’s opener at Baltimore tied with the Twins in the AL Central at 80-73 after Minnesota’s second consecutive extra-inning loss in Cleveland on Thursday. If you look on MLB.com’s standings page, it shows the Tigers above the Twins. However, if the two teams end the season tied, the Twins have the edge for a Wild Card spot.

How is that the case, you ask? It’s the tiebreaker system implemented when MLB expanded to three Wild Card teams per league and added a best-of-three Wild Card Series two years ago. With a tight window for postseason series, the tiebreaker system was added. Thus, unlike in 2009, the Tigers and Twins will not play Game 163 under any circumstances.

The first tiebreaker criteria is head-to-head matchups. Unlike last year, when the Tigers finished under .500 but dominated their division matchups, the Tigers are on the cusp of their first winning season since 2016 but finished 6-7 in their season series against the Twins, Royals and Guardians. The Tigers have a winning record in the division by going 9-1 against the White Sox.

The season series between the Tigers and Twins is setting up to be an example of how every game, no matter when it’s played during the season, can have a postseason impact. Minnesota and Detroit played two series each in April and July, before Detroit went on its late-season run. Three games in April were decided by one run, and another went to extra innings.

Two games from April, when the Tigers were over .500 and the Twins were digging out from a slow start, stand out:

April 13: Twins 11, Tigers 5 (12 innings)
The Tigers had a one-run lead in the opener of a doubleheader before Ryan Jeffers homered off Shelby Miller in the eighth inning. Both teams scored in the 11th, but the Tigers stranded the bases loaded. In the 12th, the Tigers converted no outs on a Christian Vázquez sacrifice bunt when Byron Buxton beat Spencer Torkelson’s throw to third and Zach McKinstry couldn’t recover in time to throw out Vázquez at first. An Alex Lange bases-loaded walk to Austin Martin and a Jeffers ground ball past McKinstry for an error set off a seven-run inning.

April 20: Twins 4, Tigers 3
This was during the early-season stretch when the Tigers struggled to give Reese Olson run support. In this case, an Alex Kirilloff grounder past Torkelson for an error scored one run and set up another on a Trevor Larnach sacrifice fly. The Tigers rallied to within a run but fell just short when Parker Meadows’ fly ball died at the wall in the ninth.

Even with that tiebreaker disadvantage, the Tigers have nearly a 50-50 chance to make the postseason. Their playoff odds on FanGraphs, which stood at 9.9 percent entering the week, are up to 42.5 percent. In that same span, the Twins’ playoff odds have dropped from 84 percent to 63.3. Those combined odds add up to over 100 percent to account for the possibility of the Royals, who the Tigers just swept in Kansas City, falling out of the postseason race.

While the Tigers face the O’s this weekend at Camden Yards, the Twins visit the Red Sox. Both the Tigers and Twins end the season with a six-game homestand. The Tigers host the Rays and White Sox, while the Twins host the Marlins and O’s.

The tiebreaker situation also impacts how the Tigers map out their rotation for that final week. Tarik Skubal is lined up to pitch Tuesday against the Rays. If the season’s regular-season finale vs. Chicago has postseason implications, Skubal will be available on regular rest. Even if the Tigers have a one-game lead over the Twins, that game will have meaning.