Toronto’s George Springer, whose three-run homer in the seventh was the key hit in his team’s pennant-clinching win Monday, has 23 post-season home runs. (Photo by Cole Burston/Getty Images)
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Getting to the World Series is almost as difficult as winning it.
During the days when baseball consisted of two eight-team leagues, winners at season’s end proceeded directly to the World Series. There was no inter-league play, making the best-of-seven Fall Classic the first time that teams from opposite leagues faced each other.
Expansion in 1961 and 1962 changed the structure of the game to two 10-team leagues but further expansion created the need for scheduled playoffs (unscheduled playoffs had been used to determine pennant winners previously).
The League Championship Series, added after additional expansion in 1969 created two 12-team circuits, began as a best-of-five pennant playoff, first won by the “Miracle” New York Mets in the National League and Baltimore Orioles in the American. The original best-of-five format was changed to the current best-of-seven, matching the World Series, in 1985.
Imperfect System
But the system was far from perfect, with unscheduled one-game showdowns – a 163rd game not considered part of the post-season – used to settle ties.
Since the advent of division play in 1969, there have been eight such games – half decided by one run – including the notorious “Bucky Dent Game” in Boston’s Fenway Park between the Red Sox and Dent’s Yankees in 1978.
Bucky Dent’s surprise home run helped the Yankees beat the Red Sox in an unscheduled one-game playoff in 1978. (Photo by Frank O’Brien/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
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Because of the long post-season format, tie-breakers were dropped in 2022, with ties determined by the season’s series performance of the divisional foes. That’s how the Toronto Blue Jays won both the American League East and a “bye” this month before plunging into their successful post-season.
Constant tweaking of the post-season format began after the San Francisco Giants won 103 games in 1993 but finished one game behind the Atlanta Braves in the National League West. Major League Baseball changed its postseason format to avoid sending such a successful team home for the winter.
Wild Card Format
Enter the wild-card in 1994 – after the leagues realigned geographically, with both adding Central Divisions. The new format allowed the second-place team with the best record to participate in the new Division Series. It was part of a mini-tournament that involved the three division champions plus one wild-card per league.
A second wild-card was added to the format in 2012, expanding the playoffs to five teams per league, and a third 10 years later, giving each league three participants to start the post-season.
Owners, seeking to derive even more revenue from the highly-publicized playoff tournament, actually imposed a 16-team round-robin in 2020 after the regular season was shortened from 162 games to 60 by the Covid-19 pandemic. After the Players Union objected, the format reverted to the present dozen participants.
From 2012-21, a sudden-death Wild Card Game between the two best second-place teams determined which wild-card team would advance to the Division Series.
Starting in 2022, the two divisional champions with the best records received a first-round “bye” while all other post-season qualifiers played a best-of-three Wild Card Series. Winners advanced to the best-of-five Division Series in their respective leagues.
Best-of-Nine Series
The World Series, created in 1903, has not always featured a best-of-seven format. Its original best-of-nine format was used for that first year and brought back in 1919, 1920, and 1921, though no Fall Classic ever stretched the full nine games.
The intrigue and integrity of the World Series also took a hit, according to many baseball historians and purists, when inter-league play during the regular season was introduced in 1997.
Potential World Series opponents, such as the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays this year, might have already met during the 162-game schedule.
Under the current baseball schedule, each of the teams has at least one series with each of its 29 opponents, with such “regional rivals” as the Dodgers and Angels usually scheduled for home-and-home series of at least two games.
Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred has mentioned expansion often as a personal goal to pursue before his 2029 retirement. (Photo by Julio Aguilar/Getty Images)
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According to Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred, expansion from 30 to 32 teams is a goal he would like to accomplish before retiring after the 2029 campaign. A 32-team format could produce four eight-team leagues that would make scheduling much easier – especially if inter-league play is eliminated.
The 112th World Series opens Friday at Rogers Centre in Toronto. The Jays will have the home-field advantage because they had a better record than the Dodgers during the season. Toronto finished with 94 wins, one more than Los Angeles, although the Milwaukee Brewers – swept by the Dodgers in the NLCS – had the most victories with 97.