Wild card race

Texas gained a significant advantage with a weekend sweep over Seattle.

Sep 21, , AM Updated: Sep 25, , pm. The Marlins sit one game back. So what will it take to hold onto a playoff spot? How does the relatively revamped wild card race work? Three of each of those buckets make the playoffs via a wild card spot after three division winners from each of the AL and NL earn an automatic berth.

Wild card race

A s the MLB regular season nears its conclusion this Sunday , the playoff race intensifies with a focus on the wild card entries. While seven teams are already in the playoffs , five spots remain up for grabs, creating an intense final week. Teams aim to secure one of the three playoff spots given to the best-record teams not winning their division. In the MLB season , the wild card landscape offers an intriguing twist. Three wild card teams from each league earn a ticket to the playoffs , marking a significant departure from the previous one-game Wild Card Game format. Now, the wild card round unfolds with two best-of-three series in both the American and National Leagues. The division winners boasting the top two records in each league receive a bye to the Division Series. Meanwhile, the division winner with the third-best record contends with the final wild card team in a best-of-three showdown hosted by the division winner. The fourth and fifth seeds in each league face off in another best-of-three Wild Card series , setting the stage for a thrilling postseason journey. MLB News. The National League's wild card race is equally fierce. Wild card No. In the American League : Wild card No.

The Arizona Diamondbacks and Chicago Cubs are in the best positions to clinch playoff spots, and wild card race on how results go early in the week, the Miami Marlins may be the only team left to challenge the current holders of the second and third wild-card positions. Each year, the NCAA grants automatic berths in both the men's and women's Division I basketball tournaments to the winners of 32 conferences.

In Major League Baseball MLB , the wild card teams are the three teams in each of the two leagues American and National that have qualified for the postseason despite failing to win their division. Those teams in each league possess the three best winning percentages in their league after the three division winners. The wild card was first instituted in MLB in , with one wild card team per league advancing to the Division Series in the postseason to face a division winner. In , the system was modified to add a second wild card team per league and pit each league's wild card teams against each other in a play-in game — the MLB Wild Card Game — the winner of which would then advance to the Division Series and play the team with the best record. The two teams with the best records outside of the division champions advanced to the wild card game.

First Round Bye. Kansas City. Las Vegas. New England. Buffalo is ahead of Kansas City based on head-to-head record

Wild card race

Thanks to victories by the Texas Rangers, Houston Astros and Miami Marlins on Saturday, those team punched postseason tickets — while the Toronto Blue Jays gained entry thanks to the Rangers' elimination of the Seattle Mariners with a victory. Just two playoff scenarios are in question: The AL West champion will be determined by Sunday's nd game, with the Rangers needing just a win over Seattle to clinch; an Astros loss at Arizona would also give Texas the division title. And the No. A Miami win at Pittsburgh would ensure Miami clinches the fifth seed and opens the playoffs at Philadelphia. A Miami loss and Arizona win would give the Diamondbacks a half-game edge and perhaps force the Marlins to make up the last inning of a game they lead against the New York Mets on Monday. Major League Baseball has not yet stipulated whether that game will occur should that scenario play out Sunday.

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Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. From to , the divisional playoffs featured the 1 seed hosting the "wild card" team, and the 2 seed hosting the 3 seed unless the 1 seed and wild card team were divisional rivals; in that case, the 1 seed hosted the 3 seed and the 2 seed hosted the wild card team. Diamondbacks seizing moment in final surge of regular season. Formula 1. In Major League Baseball MLB , the wild card teams are the three teams in each of the two leagues American and National that have qualified for the postseason despite failing to win their division. The rule was in place through the —08 season. Retrieved February 10, Once conference tournaments are complete, the Selection Committee need not consider conference affiliations in determining at-large berths, making it free to select as many teams from one conference as it deems correct. The main difference is that the CFL only allows the lowest ranked playoff qualifying team from a division to cross over into the other division's playoffs, whereas in the NHL it is possible for either wild card team to "cross over" to the other division, or even in cases where four teams qualify from each division for the wild card teams to swap divisional playoff brackets. Contents move to sidebar hide. The matchups in the divisional round would be:. Division I independents do not play a conference tournament and therefore do not have an automatic berth, and can only receive an at-large bid to the tournament, which rarely happens in today's game. Since the league had also implemented a fully balanced schedule each of the nine teams played each opponent once at home and once on the road , this disparity made even worse by the fact the West had one more team than the East was fully exposed in the standings — in each of the first three seasons of the new format, the fourth place team missed the playoffs with records as good as 9—7 in the West, while in the East records as bad as 3—13 were good enough for third place and a playoff berth. The conference tournaments of major conferences are generally less important, as most losers will make the "Big Dance" via an at-large bid, but often lesser big conference teams will sneak in using the conference tournament, stealing a bid from a deserving mid-major team in the long run.

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Kelton Ellis ". February Learn how and when to remove this template message. Although the National Basketball Association NBA includes wild card teams in their playoff structures, the term "wild card" is seldom used; instead, each playoff team is most commonly denoted by its seeding position within the conference. In the Philippine Basketball Association , the playoffs are done after an elimination in —06, a classification round where the top two teams with the best records are given semi-final byes, the next 3 are given quarterfinal byes, the next 4 are given entry to the wildcard phase, and the tenth team is eliminated. This change was made to ensure that the two best teams in each conference cannot meet until the conference final, and also allegedly to try and eliminate incentives for a playoff-bound team to deliberately lose games at the end of the regular season in order to "choose" a higher-seeded team that has won fewer games and, due to the unique home-court rules of the NBA, possibly gain home-court advantage for that series. The notion of "wild cards" was essentially abolished in the —16 NBA season , as changes made prior to the season meant the top eight teams in each conference qualified regardless of divisional rank, with the seeded teams ranked by percentage. Home ice advantage in each NHL playoff series prior to the Stanley Cup Finals was granted by the higher seed, even if the "wild card" team had a better regular season record. A new way to solve the problem is to attempt to switch to a more prominent conference, a phenomenon that was especially prevalent in and the early s. Read Edit View history. For the NBA playoffs , playoff qualification was complicated by the COVID pandemic , as not all teams had played the same number of games at the time of the mid-season suspension of play.