The World Series and the Road to its Path
One of the biggest championships in all of the major sports in America and around the world is discussed in some detail here.
The World Series, the Fall Classic, etc. Major League Baseballs' championship is known by many names, but most sports fans refer to it as the World Series. It is to baseball as the Super Bowl is to football, the NBA Finals are to basketball, and the Stanley Cup is to hockey. It is the biggest set games in all of baseball and the winning team not only gets a trophy and bragging rights for the year, but also a lot of attention and money.
Each Major League baseball season consists of a 162-game regular season that runs from the beginning of April till, depending on the year, either the end of September or the first couple of days of October and each team makes the trades, plays as hard as they can, and tries to avoid as many injuries and stratagise as well as possible for one goal: Make it to the playoffs and win the coveted World Series trophy and all the glory that comes with it.
Here is a basic explanation of the MLB Playoff format as it currently stands. In each league (The National League and the American League), the winner of each division automatically makes the playoffs. To win the division, you have to have a better record than every other team in your division. However, if there is a tie and two teams have the same record, the team who has won more head to head match ups is the team that wins the division. If the two teams have the same record and have tied in head to head match ups, then the team that wins the division is the team with a better overall division record. There's even more tie breakers after this if the division winner still isn't determined but that will not be covered in this blog post.
Anyways, so there are three division winners in each league and are seeded as the 1, 2, and 3 seeds based on their records. However, there are also two wild card teams in each league, the teams that haven't won their divisions but have the next best records. Unfortunately, this makes there be 5 playoff teams in each league and so to bring it down to 4 so that the ALDS and NLDS (Division Series) can be played, there is a one game wild-card playoff between the two wild card teams which is played at the stadium of the higher-ranked wild card team which is the team with the better record of the two wild card teams. Whoever wins this then plays the number 1 seed in one of the 2 division series in each league. As you can see, the playoff system in Major League Baseball isn't as simple as it may seem at first.
The rest of the playoffs runs as follows:
1) ALDS (American League Division Series- Best of 5 Games)
- AL Number 1 Seed Vs. AL Number 4 Seed
- AL Number 2 Seed Vs. AL Number 3 Seed
NLDS (National League Division Series- Best of 5 Games)
- NL Number 1 Seed Vs. NL Number 4 Seed
- NL Number 2 Seed Vs. NL Number 3 Seed
2) ALCS (American League Championship Series- Best of 7 Games)
- AL Number 1/4 Seed Vs. AL Number 2/3 Seed
NLCS (National League Championship Series- Best of 7 Games)
- NL Number 1/4 Seed Vs. NL Number 2/3 Seed
3) The World Series ( Best of 7 Games)
- AL Champions Vs. NL Champions
Hopefully, this post has helped you understand some more of how the MLB playoffs work!
No comments:
Post a Comment