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MLB playoff
expanded
NEW YORK—Major League Baseball expanded its playoff format to 10 teams
Friday, adding a second wild-card in each league.
The decision establishes a new one-game, wild-card round in each league
between the teams with the best records who are not division winners,
meaning a third-place team could win the World Series.
This is the only change in baseball’s playoff structure since the 1995
season, when wild-card teams were first added.
“This change increases the rewards of a division championship and
allows two additional markets to experience playoff baseball each
year,” Commissioner Bud Selig said in a statement.
Had there been additional wild-card teams last season, the Braves would
have made the playoffs in the NL, while the Boston Red Sox would have
qualified in the AL. Instead, each missed the postseason by a game,
both going down with historic September swoons.
For the 2012 postseason, the five-game Division Series will begin with
two home games for lower seeds, followed by home games for the higher
seed. After that, it will return to the 2-2-1 format previously used.
“The players are eager to begin playing under this new format in 2012,
and they look forward to moving to full realignment in 2013,” MLBPA
executive director Michael Weiner said.
As part of baseball’s labor deal, the Houston Astros will switch to the
American League for 2013, creating two 15-team leagues with three
divisions each. Players wanted the change to equalize the chances for
making the playoffs for every division.
Each season, eight of 30 major league teams have made the playoffs
under the format that began in 1995, a year later than intended because
of a strike that wiped out the end of the ’94 season. The postseason
included just the league winners from 1903-68, then increased to four
teams in 1969 after the leagues split into divisions.
In the NFL, 12 of 32 teams make the playoffs. In both the NBA and NHL,
16 of 30 teams advance to the postseason.
Adding two more playoffs teams this year has been complicated because
the regular-season schedule was drafted last spring and summer, and the
extra game has to be put in place in a manner that doesn’t disrupt the
World Series schedule. In a further complication, both sides reached a
consensus that ties for division titles would be broken on the field
with a tiebreaker game under the new format, and not by head-to-head
record.
Head-to-head record has been used since 1995 to determine first place
if both teams are going to the postseason. But the sides decided that
with the start of a one-game, winner-take-all wild-card round, the
difference between first place and a wild-card berth is too important
to decide with a formula and that a tiebreaker game should be played.
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