How Are Baseball Playoff Teams Determined?
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Division Winners
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Major League Baseball is split into two leagues, the American League and the National League. Each league is divided into three divisions: East, West and Central. At the end of the 162-game regular season, the team with the best record in each division advances to the playoffs.
If two teams are tied for the best record in a division, those two teams meet in a one-game playoff to determine the division champion. The team with the better record in head-to-head games between the clubs in the regular season gets to host the one-game playoff. Before 2009, the home team in such a playoff was decided by a coin flip.
Wild Cards
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Each league also sends one wild card team to the playoffs. The wild card team is the non-division-winning team with the best won-loss record. In other words, the wild card team is the best second-place team in each league. If two teams are tied for the wild card, they advance to a one-game playoff. The home team for the one-game playoff is determined the same way as a tie is for a division title.
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Exception
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If two teams tie for the division lead, and the loser of a one-game playoff would claim the wild card spot, then there is no one-game playoff. Instead, the team with the better head-to-head record is named the division champion and the other team is named the wild card team. The rationale behind this exception is that if both teams knew they would be advancing anyway, they would likely save their energy for the real playoffs and would sit their best players. The one-game playoff, therefore, would run the risk of becoming an embarrassment to the sport.
This happened in 2005, when the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox tied for the best record in the American League East at 95-67. The next-best second-place team was the Cleveland Indians at 93-69. The Yankees and Red Sox would both be going to the playoffs regardless, so the Yankees were declared the AL East champions based on a better head-to-head record, and the Red Sox became the wild card team.
Playoff Seeding
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In each league, the four playoff teams are seeded 1 through 4. The wild card team, regardless of its record, is always the No. 4 seed, and the division winners are seeded 1 through 3 according to their regular season records. In the first round of the playoffs, the wild card team plays the highest-seeded team outside its own division, while the two other division champions play each other. The winners of the two opening series in each league advance to the League Championship Series. The winners of those series meet in the World Series.
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