when did the wild card start in mlb
Major League Baseball wild card From 1969 through 1993, division leaders in each league advanced to the League Championship Series, with the winners of each LCS meeting in the World Series. However, an expanding number of teams over the years made making the playoffs increasingly difficult. The new system was instituted in 1994 (but first used in 1995 because a players strike canceled the 1994 playoffs) when Major League Baseball expanded from two to three divisions per league. In the new three-division leagues, each league had four teams in the playoffs. In addition to the three division winners, a wild-card team made the playoffs as the fourth seed. This was the team with the most wins amongst non-division winners. The wild-card matchup was played in the first round between the League leader in wins and the wild-card team, unless both teams were in the same division, which resulted in the wild card facing the second-best division winner in the league.
Wild card (sports) The NFL was the first league ever to use the wild-card format. The decision to implement a Wild Card coincided with the completion of the AFL-NFL merger in 1970. Prior to the merger, the right to compete in the postseason for the NFL title was restricted to division/conference champions. Until 1967, a tiebreaker game was played to resolve a deadlock for first place in either of the two conferences. When the league expanded to 16 teams, it realigned into four divisions and expanded the playoffs to two rounds. Tiebreaker games were eliminated in favor of the use of performance-based criteria to determine division champions. The rival American Football League, which reached a final size of ten teams in two divisions, also restricted its postseason to division winners until the 1969 season (the AFL's last as a separate league) when it expanded the playoffs to include division runners-up. The runners-up played the winners of the opposite divisions for the right to contest the AFL Championship Game.