How the MLB Season works
The Structure of the Baseball Season
There are 30 professional sides in the MLB. For historical reasons which don’t make much sense to someone from outside the States and beginning to get to know baseball (marketing, political wrangling, people not getting along in 1890 something), the 30 sides are divided into two leagues - the National League and the American League. So 15 teams in each league and it is not divided up geographically. For example, the New York Yankees are in the American League whilst the New York Mets are in the National League. Anyway, these 15 teams are further divided up into three divisions. These are drawn up geographically (more or less), and each league has three divisions called East, Central and West.
So, three divisions of 5 teams split geographically across the country (and it’s a big country). 162 games I hear you say? So who do they play? The 4 teams of their division over and over again? Well, no, it's complicated. Unlike a normal league in football or rugby, say, no team has the same fixture list. The 162 games gets broken down into a real mix, as follows:
- 13 games are played against each of the four other teams in their own division (52 games total),
- 6 or 7 games against each of the other ten teams in their own league (64 games),
- 4 games against one "geographic rival" from the other league, and 3 games each against the other fourteen teams from the other league (46 games).
So as you can see, it depends on which division you are in, then where you are based, and finally which league you are in as to the teams you face during the season.
So what happens after you play your 162 games? Each team will have a win and loss record expressed as the win number first, e.g. 81-81. This is often expressed also as their winning percentage and baseball loves these shown as .500 which is a 50% winning percentage. Anyway, back to the season. Each team has its win and loss record and is ranked in its division accordingly. Now it gets complicated.
There are playoffs to decide who wins the season (the “Postseason”).
Who gets to go to the Postseason and how is it structured?
The winner of each division will go to the Postseason. Then all the other teams in a league will be ranked together based on their win-loss record. The 3 teams with the best record will be awarded “wild-cards” to enter into the postseason, leaving 6 teams in total from each league to go into the postseason where each team receives a seeding. The teams from each league are separated and only play other teams from their leagues in the postseason until the Conference Series Final which decides the representative of each league to play in the World Series - the final of baseball.
Each league uses the same seeding format below:
- No. 1 seed: Best record in their league
- No. 2 seed: Second-best record for a division winner
- No. 3 seed: Third-best record for a division winner
- No. 4 seed: Best record for Wild Card teams
- No. 5 seed: Second-best record for Wild Card teams
- No. 6 seed: Third-best record for Wild Card teams
6 plays 3 and 5 plays 4 in the Wild Card round (best of 3 matches). In the next round (called the Divisional Series (best of 5 matches) 1 plays winner of 5v4 and 2 plays winner of 3v6. The winners of the Divisional series play in the Conference Series (best of 7 matches) and the winners of the Conference Series play the World Series - AL v NL (best of 7 matches).
Simple.