an automatic one game advantage. United States and Canada Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) itself does not use the term "playoffs" for championship tournaments. Instead, it uses the term "postseason" as the title of the official elimination tournament held after the conclusion of the regular season. From to and , it had consisted of a first round single-elimination Wild Card Game between the two wild-card teams in each league. From , two best-of-three Wild Card Series first round is conducted, followed by a best-of-five second round series called the Division Series, and two rounds of best-of-seven series for the League Championship Series and World Series. One exception is , when the first-round series, the Wild Card Series, a best-of-three round, was created, along with the other rounds. First three seeds went to division champions, next three seeds to division runner-ups, and last two to the next-best records. The pairings for the WCS is as follows: top seed vs. eighth, second vs. seventh, third vs. sixth, and fourth vs. fifth. The DS will have the 1-8 winner play the 4-5 winner, while the 2-7 winner plays the 3-6 winner. MLB uses a "2-3-2" format for the final two rounds of its postseason tournament. The singular term "playoff" is reserved for the rare situation in which two (or more) teams find themselves tied at the end of the regular season and are forced to have a tiebreaking playoff game (or games) to determine which team will advance to the postseason. Thus, a "playoff" is actually part of the regular season and can be called a "pennant playoff". However, the plural term "playoffs" is conventionally used by fans and media to refer to baseball's postseason tournament, not including the World Series. MLB is the oldest of the major American professional sports, dating back to the 1870s. As such, it is steeped in tradition. The final series to determine its champion has been called the "World Series" (originally "World's Championship Series" and then "World's Series") as far back as the National League's contests with the American Association during the 1880s. Minor League Baseball Most of the domestic Minor League Baseball (MiLB) leagues which are affiliated with Major League Baseball conduct playoffs after their regular season to determine champions. Before the 2021 reorganization of MiLB, most leagues at the Triple-A, Double-A, and Class A-Advanced classification levels included four qualifying teams which competed in