ESPN, ESPN2 and ABC will team to televise the 2022 MLB Wild Card Series beginning Friday with four games, marking the debut of the reformatted and expanded baseball postseason.
Four best-of-3 series will be on tap in the first year of the wild card round, which will feature each league’s third- through sixth-best teams recordwise. The winners of this weekend’s games across Friday-Sunday will advance to the best-of-5 divisional rounds beginning October 11, where AL division champs the New York Yankees and Houston Astros and NL division champs Los Angeles Dodgers and Atlanta Braves await.
The LDS winners go on to the best-of-7 League Championship Series which begin October 18. After the wild card weekend, all games will be televised by Fox/FS1 and TBS.
The World Series begins this year on October 28 on Fox, later than usual after a delayed start to the 2022 season because of a lockout. The resulting five-year collective bargaining deal between the league and players resulted in the implementation of the new playoff format, which guarantees more teams and more games in the postseason in the most significant changes to the MLB structure since 1994.
A snapshot of the Wild Card playoff schedule (all times ET) is below. ESPN Radio will air all postseason games this year.
Friday, October 7
Tampa Bay at Cleveland, noon, ESPN
Philadelphia at St. Louis, 2 pm, ABC
Seattle at Toronto, 4 p.m., ESPN
San Diego at New York Mets, 8 p.m., ESPN
Saturday, October 8
Tampa Bay at Cleveland, noon, ESPN2
Seattle at Toronto, 4 p.m., ESPN
San Diego at New York Mets, 7:30 p.m., ESPN
Philadelphia at St. Louis, 8:30 p.m., ESPN2
Sunday, October 9 (if necessary)
Seattle at Toronto, 2 p.m., ABC
Tampa Bay at Cleveland, 4 p.m., ESPN
San Diego at New York Mets, 7:30 p.m., ESPN
Philadelphia at St. Louis, 8:30 p.m., ESPN2
