Major League Baseball Wild Card

In Major League Baseball (MLB), the wild card teams are the three teams in each of the two leagues (American and National) that qualify for the postseason despite failing to win their division; the three wild card teams in each league possess the three best winning percentages in their league after the league's three division winners. The wild card was first instituted in MLB in 1994 after the playoff was expanded from 4 teams to 8 teams and MLB divisions were realigned to feature 3 divisions in each league instead of 2, which meant that one non-division winner per league made the playoff and would face a division winner in the first round Division Series.

In 2012, the system was modified to add a second wild card team per league (expanding the playoffs to 10 teams). And the wild card teams played 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 in their league. The two teams with the best records outside of the division champions advanced to the wild card game. The two wild card teams could come out of the same division so there was no guarantee a team that came in second place in their division would make the playoffs.

The system was changed in 2022 to add a third wild card team from each league (expanding the playoffs to 12 teams), along with replacing the play-in game with an 8 team best-of-three Wild Card Series featuring the 3 wild cards from each league and the lowest-seeded division winner in each league, with winners of each league's wild card series advance to face the two-best division winners in that league's Division Series.

In its history after being implemented, a total of 8 wildcard teams have won the World Series, while another 8 teams appeared in the World Series as Wild Card team, with the 2002, 2014, and 2023 World Series being the only editions of the World Series to have featured two Wild Card teams.