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Major League Baseball tie-breaking procedures are used by Major League Baseball (MLB) to break ties between teams for qualification and seeding into the MLB postseason. The procedures in use since 2022, when a third wild card team and resulting Wild Card Series were added for both the American League and National League, are outlined below.
One-game tiebreakers were played between teams tied for a division championship or a league's second wild-card berth. These games were played the day after the season was scheduled to end. Home-field advantage was determined using the rules listed below ("Breaking Ties Without Playoff Games"). [1] [2]
From the implementation of the wild-card in 1994 to the end of the 2011 season, a different rule was in place. Two teams tied for a division did not play a tiebreaker if their records were better than all non-division winners in their league. Instead, said tie was broken using the rules listed below ("Breaking Ties Without Playoff Games"). This happened in 2001 Major League Baseball season when the Houston Astros (9–7 against STL) and St. Louis Cardinals (7–9 against HOU) tied for first in the National League Central with records of 93–69. [3] [4] [5] In 2005, the New York Yankees (10–9 against BOS) and Boston Red Sox (9–10 against NYY) each finished 95–67 in the American League East. [6] In 2006, the Los Angeles Dodgers (5–13 against SD) and the San Diego Padres (13–5 against LAD) [7] were tied for the National League West division title and the Wild Card at 88–74. In this case, the rules below are used to determine the division winner.[ citation needed ] The team that had the better head-to-head record (the 2001 Astros, 2005 Yankees, and 2006 Padres) was the division champion, thus receiving a better seed in the postseason. The other team (the 2001 Cardinals, 2005 Red Sox, and 2006 Dodgers) was seeded as the wild card.
From 2012 to 2021, when the Wild Card Game was established as a second wild-card berth was adopted, the non-division winner with the best record in the league faced possible elimination on the first day of the postseason. Consequently, the tie-breaking rules were changed so that two teams tied for a division championship had to play a tiebreaking game even if both teams had already qualified for the postseason. [8] [9] [10] The team losing the tie-breaking game qualified for a wild-card berth only if its regular-season record was among the league's two best records for non-division-winners. If that team were tied for the second wild-card spot, a second tie-breaking game would have been played. [11] [12] [13] [14]
If, on the other hand, two teams had been tied for the first wild-card spot, no tie-breaking game would have been played. Rather, the two teams simply played against each other in the Wild Card game, with home-field advantage awarded using tie-breaking rules described in the next section. [11]
Beginning with the 2022 season, a third wild-card berth per league was adopted (with the Wild Card game becoming a Wild Card series). Thus, the tiebreaker game format was eliminated, to compensate for the expanded (12-team) postseason. [15] [16]
Coin tosses or drawing of lots will be used if all criteria below fail.
*All current references in mlb.com website indicate that this rule applies even for teams that are not in the same division.
If two champions from separate divisions have the same record, the tiebreaking procedure listed above is used to determine postseason seeding. No additional games are played.
Tied teams are designated as A, B, C, and D. Choice for one of these designations is first given to the team winning the tie-breakers (listed below). While A is usually the "best" designation, there are some scenarios where C has a different path to the postseason. If a division title is up for grabs, then those divisional teams will select from the first designations (A, B,...). [13] [17] [18] [19]
On Day 1, A will host B and C will host D (if there is no fourth team, C will be considered to have won this game). Games on Day 2 may occur as follows:
The order in which teams pick their designations (A, B, C, D) will be determined by the following 5-step tie-breaking system. If there is a tie for both wild card and division title spots, then the first designations will match teams competing for their division title.
If at any given step some, but not all, teams remain tied, then those teams that are still tied revert to Step 1.
Beginning in 2022, the rules are changed using 5 step tiebreaking procedure for multi-way ties without using team designation: If more than two teams DO NOT all have identical records against one another, and one team has a better record against all other teams, If two or more teams have identical records against one another and each has a better record against the third or fourth team(s), then these two teams follow the two-club tiebreaker rules to determine the qualifier. Otherwise, the three clubs are ranked by their overall winning percentage against one another, and the club with the highest overall winning percentage is the qualifier. [21] [22] If two of the clubs have identical winning percentages in this scenario, then they would follow the two-club tiebreaker procedure.
If all teams DO have identical records against one another, then the team with the best intradivision record and intraconference (see below) is the qualifier.
Note: Again, if at any given step some, but not all, teams remain tied, then those teams that are still tied revert to Step 1.
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