One-game playoffs

A one-game playoff, sometimes known as a pennant playoff, tiebreaker game or knockout game, is a tiebreaker in certain sports—usually but not always professional—to determine which of two teams, tied in the final standings, will qualify for a post-season tournament. Such a playoff is either a single game or a short series of games (such as best-2-of-3).

This is distinguished from the more general usage of the term "playoff", which refers to the post-season tournament itself.

One-game playoffs are currently used in Major League Baseball (MLB). When two or more MLB teams are tied for a division championship or the wild card playoff berth (1995–2011, or starting in 2012, the second only) at the end of the regular season, a one-game playoff is used to determine the winner.

If a tie were (from 1995-2011) a two-way tie for a division championship and both tied teams' have records higher than those records of the second-place teams in the other divisions, or (from 2012-present) between the two division non-champions with the untied best record, there is no one-game playoff. In this scenario, the winner of the season series between the two teams is deemed to win the tie for purposes of playoff seeding. Through the 2008 season, home-field advantage for one-game playoffs was determined by a coin flip, but effective in 2009, home advantage is based on a set of performance criteria, with the first tiebreaker being head-to-head record.

For statistical purposes, one-game playoffs are considered part of the regular season. The result of the playoff is included in the regular season standings and individual player statistics are included along with the statistics for the rest of the season. One significant playoff-like deviation from normal regular season games in force as of 2007^[update] is that six-man umpire crews are used (as opposed to the four-man crews of the regular season).Also, television broadcasting rights for all are negotiated by MLB - since 2012, the network owning the rights to the Wild Card Game for a particular league has also had the rights to any tiebreaker(s) that might occur in that league.

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