The Major League Baseball (MLB) postseason is the annual playoff elimination tournament held to determine the champion of MLB in the United States and Canada. Since 2022, the postseason for each league—American and National—consists of two best-of-three Wild Card Series contested by the lowest-seeded division winner and the three wild card teams, two best-of-five Division Series (LDS) featuring the wild-card winners and the two highest-seeded division winners, and finally the best-of-seven League Championship Series (LCS). The winners of the American League Championship Series (ALCS) and the National League Championship Series (NLCS) play each other in the best-of-seven World Series. The postseason tournament takes place after the conclusion of MLB's regular season and takes approximately one month to complete.
Format history
1903–1968: World Series only (2 team playoff) Major League Baseball is the oldest of North America's major professional sports organizations, with roots dating back to the 1870s. The final series to determine its champion has been called the "World Series" (originally "World's Championship Series" and then "World's Series") as far back as the National League's contests with the American Association starting at the beginning of the 1880s.
From 1901 to 1968, each league champion, or pennant winner, was the team with the best regular-season win–loss record. In 1903, modern annual postseason play began with a one-round system, in which the American League champion played the National League champion in a best-of-seven series (in 1903, 1919, 1920, and 1921, it was best-of-nine) called the World Series; however, there was no 1904 Series because the National League champion New York Giants refused to play. This single-tiered approach persisted through 1968, even after both leagues expanded in 1961–1962 to ten teams.
1969–1993: Addition of League Championship series (4 team playoff) In 1969, both leagues expanded to 12 teams, complicating the competition for the league championship. Imitating the other major sports' long-standing playoff traditions, MLB split each league into East and West divisions, creating four divisions of six teams each until expansions in 1977 and 1993. This created a new postseason round called the League Championship Series (LCS), in which the East and West division champions of each league played a best-of-five series to determine the league champion. In 1985, the LCS was expanded to a best-of-seven series, which continues today.
Under this system, it was possible for one of the best teams in a league to be left out of the postseason if it failed to win its division. Most notably, in , the Atlanta Braves and San Francisco Giants finished with the two best records in MLB with 104 and 103 wins, respectively. However, since both teams played in the National League West division, the Giants missed the postseason by a single game.
The baseball players' strike of 1981 uniquely—for this era—added another round to the postseason. Because the strike split the season into two roughly equal halves, the division winners of each half of the 1981 season met in a best-of-five division series. The winners of the division series then progressed to the league championship series, with the remainder of the postseason following a similar format to other years in this era.
1994–2011: Addition of Division Series (8 team playoff) In 1994, MLB realigned, adding a Central division to both leagues while retaining the pre-existing East and West divisions. To avoid having a playoff tournament consisting of an odd number of divisional winners, a wild card playoff spot was introduced to each league, imitating the original post-merger NFL system. The wild card berth was given to the team with the best record among the division runners-up. This assured that the team with the second-best record in its league qualified for the postseason even if it did not win its division, avoiding cases such as that of the 1993 San Francisco Giants discussed above. This new format doubled the postseason participants in each league from two to four, and from four teams overall to eight.
The additional teams made another elimination round necessary. This new round became the new first round of the postseason, the best-of-five Division Series. As mentioned above, this term had first been used for the extra round in 1981 required by the "split-season" scheduling anomaly following the midseason baseball players strike; with this playoff expansion, the Division Series became permanent. This format was in place for the 1994 season, but that year's players' strike canceled the postseason. The format was realized on the field in 1995.
Under this format, in the two Division Series, the wild card team played the divisional champion outside its own division that had the better record, with the remaining two teams playing each other in the second Division Series for each league. The two Division Series winners from each league go on to play each other in the League Championship Series. As with the previous postseason format, the winners of each League Championship Series met in the World Series.
2012–2019; 2021: Addition of Single Wild Card Games (10 team playoff) With the adoption of the new collective bargaining agreement in November 2011, baseball commissioner Bud Selig announced that a new playoff system would begin within two years; the change was ultimately put into place in 2012. The format employed a one-game wild-card playoff.
Under this format, a second wild-card team was added to each league, the team with the second-highest win total in each league among non-division winners. The two wild-card teams played in a one-game playoff after the end of the regular season, with the winner advancing to the best-of-five Division Series. As in the previous format, the division champions qualified for the Division Series; however, under the expanded wild-card format, the winner of the Wild Card Game played the division winner with the best record in the Division Series, regardless of whether the two teams were in the same division, while the other two division winners played each other in the other Division Series, with the second-best division winner having home-field advantage. The format for placement in the League Championship Series and World Series remained unchanged.
With this format, it was possible for two teams in the same division to play each other before the League Championship Series.
2020: 16-team playoff (beginning of Wild Card series) During the suspension of the 2020 MLB season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, all proposals put forward during negotiations between MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) included a temporarily expanded postseason. The various proposals included 16-team formats and included the 2020 and (in some proposals) 2021 seasons. However, the eventual lack of a negotiated season structure initially resulted in the 2020 season being intended to keep the 10-team format.
On July 23, 2020, MLBPA and the owners agreed to expand to a 16-team playoff structure for the 2020 season. The first round was called the Wild Card Series. The format consisted of eight teams from each league, seeded in the following order: division winners by record (1–3), runner-up teams by record (4–6), and the two best teams remaining (7–8). All games in this format were a best-of-three hosted by the higher seeds. All other series (LDS, LCS, and World Series) remained the same. The WCS pairings were as follows: top seed vs. eighth, second vs. seventh, third vs. sixth, and fourth vs. fifth. The DS had the 1/8 winner play the 4/5 winner, while the 2/7 winner played the 3/6 winner. This format was only used for that particular season as MLB reverted to the previous 10-team setup for the 2021 postseason.
2022–present: 12-team playoff (revised Wild Card series) In the 2022 collective bargaining negotiations, owners and players agreed to a 12-team postseason, with 6 teams per league: the three division winners and three wild card teams.
Seedings for the six teams are as follows: Division winners (1, 2, 3) Wild-card teams (4, 5, 6)
This new postseason format was implemented starting with the season. The two division winners with the best record in each league receive byes to the Division Series. The third place division winner is seeded third, and the three wild card teams are each seeded from four to six in order of their regular season record. These three wild card teams along with the third-place division winner then play in the Wild Card Round, a best-of-three-game series in which the third-seeded division winner hosts the sixth-seeded wild card team and the fourth-seeded wild card team hosts the fifth-seeded wild card team for all three games. The tie-breaker game (a.k.a. "Game 163") was also eliminated with playoff spots now determined through tie-breaker formulas.
The tiebreaker criteria, consistent for both seeding and playoff qualification, are as follows, with coin flips (two teams) or draw of lots (at least three teams) if all of those fail: Head-to-head record Intra-division record Inter-division record Record in last half of intra-league games
If the tie cannot be broken through these means, the last tiebreaker is expanded to include the game before the last half of intra-league games, then two games before, continuing in this pattern until the tie is resolved, provided that such additional game was not between any of the tied Clubs.
The brackets remain fixed, with no re-seeding. In the Division Series, the 1 seed plays the 4/5 winner, while the 2 seed plays the 3/6 winner.
Home-field advantage
World Series The World Series used several different formats in its early years. Initially, it generally followed an alternating home-and-away pattern, except that if a seventh game was possible, its site was determined by coin toss prior to the sixth game. In 1924, the World Series began using a 2-3-2 format, presumably to save on travel costs, a pattern that has continued to this day with the exception of a couple of the World War II years when wartime travel restrictions compelled a 3-4 format (used in 1943 and 1945, but not in the 1944 series, which was contested between crosstown rivals the St. Louis Browns and St. Louis Cardinals; all games were held in the same stadium in St. Louis). From the start of the 2-3-2 format through the 2002 season, home-field advantage generally alternated between leagues each year. Prior to the 1994 strike, the National League champion received home-field advantage in even-numbered years and the American League champion in odd-numbered years; these were reversed for 1995–2002 (because 1994 would have been the NL's turn to have home-field, but the World Series was canceled by the aforementioned strike). This changed in 2003.
The 2002 All-Star Game ended in a tie, much to the displeasure of both fans and sportswriters, who complained about a lack of intensity and competitiveness on the part of the players. This hit especially close to home for Commissioner Bud Selig, as the game had been played in his home city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In response, to make the game's outcome more meaningful, in 2003, MLB began assigning home-field advantage in the World Series to the winner of that year's All-Star Game, which is typically held in mid-July.