Since 2022, Major League Baseball (MLB) has overhauled its tie-breaking procedures, eliminating traditional one-game playoff tiebreakers to accommodate the expanded 12-team postseason format with a third wild-card team. Instead, ties between two teams are now broken mathematically by comparing head-to-head winning percentage, intradivision and intraleague records, and the results of recent intraleague games, with a coin toss as the ultimate fallback. Historically, the rules have varied: from 1994 to 2011, division ties were often settled without a playoff game—as seen in 2001 when the Houston Astros beat out the St. Louis Cardinals for the NL Central via a superior head-to-head mark. In contrast, from 2012 to 2021, teams tied for a division championship or a second wild-card spot were forced to play a sudden-death tiebreaker game. For ties between two division champions from different divisions, no extra games are played; seeding is simply determined using the same statistical criteria. This system ensures a clear, structured method for finalizing postseason brackets while avoiding schedule extensions.