Major League Baseball teams play 162 games in a season, with teams with the best records making the playoffs. Each league has three divisions, and the team with the best record in each division qualifies for the postseason. The team with the best record out of the teams that do not win their division plays a wildcard playoff with one of the three division winners, so four teams in each league make the playoffs. In some cases, however, teams end up tied and must follow a specific format to determine who qualifies.
Divisional or Wild-Card Tie
If three teams end up tied for the lead in a division or for the wild card, they will play a two-game series between them to decide on a winner. The league will designate teams as A, B and C, with two teams playing a game on the first day and two teams playing on the second day. Team A gets first choice on when it plays. The winner of the game on the first day plays the remaining team on the second day, with the winner of that game moving on to the playoffs. Team designation comes from the teams' winning percentages against one another. If each team has a winning record against one team and a losing record against the other, the team with the best winning percentage in games played between the teams will receive first choice.
Mixed Tie
In some cases, three teams might end up tied for a wild-card berth, with two of those teams also tied for a division title. When this occurs, the two teams from the same division will play first, with the winner of that game taking the division title. The next day, the losing team from the first game will play the remaining tied team, with the winner earning the wild-card berth.
Tie Between Division Winners
When three division winners have the same record, they need a tiebreaker to determine who has home field advantage in the playoffs. This process begins by determining the team with the best winning percentage against the other division winners. If this does not resolve the tie, it comes down to the team with the best record against its own division. Other potential tiebreakers include the best overall record while ignoring interleague play and the best record over the final 81 games of the season while ignoring interleague play.
Old Method
Before these rules changed in 2003, Major League Baseball would have two teams play a tiebreaker game to decide the winner of the wild card or division, with the third team sitting out. The winner of the tiebreaker game would make the playoffs and the loser would not because the game would knock the team's winning percentage below the third team's percentage. The third team would either make the playoffs or not make the playoffs, depending on the number of spots available, without having to play because its winning percentage would not change.
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