Wild card games today series#

From 1995 to 1997, a yearly rotation was used to decide the match-ups in the Division Series, although the wild card team was prevented from playing its own division's champion.

Thus, a third postseason round was added, the Division Series. This assured that the team with the second-best record in its league would qualify for the postseason even if it wasn’t a division champion. In the new three-division leagues, each league had four teams in the playoffs in addition to the three division winners, the division runner-up with the best record received a wild card spot. The new system was instituted in 1994 (but first used in 1995 because a players strike canceled the 1994 playoffs) when Major League Baseball expanded from two to three divisions per league. However, an expanding number of teams in MLB over the years made making the playoffs increasingly difficult. One wild card per league (1994–2011) įrom 1969 through 1993, the division leaders in each league advanced to the League Championship Series, with the winners of each LCS meeting in the World Series. 5 Wild card winners by year and by most wild card titles.4 Three wild cards per league (2022–present).The system was changed in 2022 to add a third wild card team from each league, along with replacing the play-in game with three-game series. The two wild card teams could come out of the same division so there was no guarantee a team that came in second place in their division would make the playoffs. The two teams with the best records outside of the division champions advanced to the wild card game.

Wild card games today series#

In 2012, the system was modified to add a second wild card team per league and pit each league's wild card teams against each other in a play-in game – the MLB Wild Card Game – the winner of which would then advance to the Division Series and play the team with the best record. The wild card was first instituted in MLB in 1994, with one wild card team per league advancing to the Division Series in the postseason to face a division winner. Those teams in each league possess the three best winning percentages in their league after the three division winners. In Major League Baseball (MLB), the wild card teams are the three teams in each of the two leagues ( American and National) that have qualified for the postseason despite failing to win their division.