SFist brings you yesterday's baseball madness in a nutshell or two: with only three games left this weekend to finish the season, the Giants, Dodgers and Athletics all won, the Angels lost, and the Astros didn't play, leaving the Giants, who are playing the dreaded Dodgers this weekend, three games back of Los Angeles in the NL West and tied with the Astros in the Wild Card race, and the A's, who are playing the abominable Angels this weekend, tied with Anaheim in the AL West. Can you imagine a more sickeningly exciting scenario for a Bay Area baseball fan? And about yesterday's games: young Jerome Williams was huge for the Giants and young Bobby Crosby was huge for the A's.

So here's how it all works over the weekend, first for the Giants. If they lose any of their three games against the Dodgers, they lose the division. If they have a worse record than the Astros, they lose the Wild Card. There are also some tiebreaker scenarios. If the Giants sweep the Dodgers this weekend, thus ending up in a tie, the two teams come to San Francisco to play a one game playoff for the Division in San Francisco on Monday. If they have the same record over the weekend as Houston, the two teams come to San Francisco to play a one game playoff for the Wilds Card in San Francisco on Monday. If all three teams tie (meaning sweeps for the Giants and Astros), then the Giants play the Dodgers on Monday, here, for the Division and the loser plays the Astros the next day for the Wild Card. (The Giants have the home-field advantage in all the tiebreaker scenarios because they went five-for-five in a series of coin tosses a few weeks ago. They actually have options in the three-way tie described above, but they'd probably opt for that setup.)

For the A's and Angels, things are a lot more straightforward. Whoever wins the series in Oakland this weekend (tickets are still available) wins the division and goes to the playoffs. Whoever loses goes home.

Update: For an official MLB explication of tiebreaker scenarios, which doesn't jive exactly with some of the description above, check here.