***9:03 PM UPDATE: With the Angels win, the magic number is now 1.

The Angels can clinch home-field advantage in the first round tonight with a win and a White Sox loss.

My reasoning:

The Angels are 93-59, the White Sox are 84-68. If the Angels finish ahead of the White Sox, the worst they can possibly do is be the #2 seed in the AL, because:

* The Halos would have a better record than any AL Central team
* If the wild card comes out of the East, the Angels would play the wild card team, and the wild card team never gets home-field advantage.
* If the wild card came out of the Central, even if the Angels had a worse record than the AL East winner, the Angels would still have a better record than the Central winner, meaning the Angels would have home-field in the first round.

Game 1 will either be Oct. 1 (Wednesday) or Oct. 2 (Thursday).

Note: I first posted this at Bugs & Cranks. I'm usually not one to promote my stuff, but I hadn't seen anyone else mention this here. (I didn't want to start another epic post like Hostility Abounds a couple of days ago.)