It's been a long time, but the Major League Baseball postseason will be back to its normal format following a pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign. The regular season is already part of the past and we're ready to see the 2021 MLB playoffs.

Nearly seven months and 162 games later, we already know the six divisional winners and the four Wild Card sides who will compete in the playoffs. This year has been intense and there was room for drama until the very end, but now it's time for the most exciting time of the season to take center stage.

In 2020, the Covid-19 outbreak affected last year's play and the postseason, which was expanded from ten participating teams to 16, with each one of them starting from the Wild Card round. Fortunately, that's way behind us and the upcoming MLB playoffs won't be played like that.

The format of the 2021 MLB playoffs

After the controversial experience of the 2020 postseason, the 2021 MLB playoffs will include ten teams again: six divisional winners, three from the American League and three from the National League, plus four sides (two from each league) who earned a Wild Card spot.

The AL and NL play their own playoffs until there's one remaining side from each league. The postseason begins with the Wild Card round, where the best seeded teams that were not Division winners face off in a one-game playoff to move on to the next round.

The six Division champions (East, Central, and West of each league) wait in the Division series of their respective leagues. These series, which are played to the best of five, see the Division winner with the best record taking on the Wild Card winner while the remaining two Division leaders clash in the other tie.

The two sides who emerge victorious from this stage face each other in the League Championship series, played to the best of seven to determine who is crowned in its respective league and advances to the ultimate round of the MLB playoffs.

In the World Series, the two League winners (one from the American League and the other from the National League) battle it out for the Major League Baseball championship in a best-of-seven series. These are the teams who have made it to the 2021 MLB playoffs and this is how they'll play:

Wild Card:

Divison Series:

American League

1: Winner of Yankees-Red Sox vs. Tampa Bay Rays
2: Chicago White Sox vs. Houston Astros

National League

1: Winner of Cardinals-Dodgers vs. San Francisco Giants
2: Atlanta Braves vs. Milwaukee Brewers

League Championship Series

American League
  • Winner of Division Series 1 vs. Winner of Division Series 2
National League
  • Winner of Division Series 1 vs. Winner of Division Series 2

World Series

  • American League winner vs. National League winner