The 2022 Major League Baseball postseason? It looms! This year’s playoffs mark the debut of the new format that was negotiated as part of the semi-new collective bargaining agreement. The field expands from 10 teams to 12, and the bygone Wild Card Game has been replaced with the best-of-three Wild Card Series, which doubles as the opening round. In order to get from 10 teams to 12, each league has added one wild-card entrant. But that isn’t the only wrinkle, as we’re about to detail.
The format
The two division winners with the best records in each league are rewarded with a first-round bye. For the National League this year, that means the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Atlanta Braves will bypass the Wild Card Series and go straight to the best-of-five Division Series. In the American League, the Houston Astros and the New York Yankees have earned the same privilege.
The remaining division winner in each league automatically gets the No. 3 seed, which means they’ll be pitted against the bottom wild-card team in the opening round. In the NL, that means the NL Central-champion St. Louis Cardinals will face the No. 6 seed (the Philadelphia Phillies) in the Wild Card Series, while the top wild-card team (the New York Mets), gets matched up against the second No. 5 seed (the San Diego Padres).
In the AL, it’s of course the same format applied to a different suite of teams. As noted, the Astros and Yankees will have byes. That leaves the No. 3 seed Cleveland Guardians, winners of the American League Central, to face the No. 6 seed (Tampa Bay Rays). That leaves the top wild-card team (the Toronto Blue Jays) to face the second wild-card team (the Seattle Mariners).
Of note is that the higher seed in each of the best-of-three Wild Card Series will host all the games of that series. That means the Cardinals, Mets, Guardians, and Blue Jays will host all of those first-round games even if their respective series goes the full three games. On the other side of things, the Phillies, Padres, Mariners, and Rays could see their 2022 postseason runs end without enjoying a playoff home game.
There’s no re-seeding after each playoff round, but ideally that’s a wrinkle that will be added at some point in the future.
With the addition of the Wild Card Series this year, MLB has done away with Game 163 tiebreakers. In past years, teams with identical records that tied for a division crown…
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