Welcome to FTW Explains, a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world. Are you wondering if or what role the MLB All-Star Game plays in the World Series? We’re here to help.
Major League Baseball often experiments and switches up its rules to improve the game, increase its pace or enhance safety for players with some of the most signifiant changes yet implemented in the 2023 MLB season.
Something that isn’t new, however, is the All-Star Game and its impact on the World Series.
Since 2017, the league that wins the All-Star Game no longer gets home-field advantage in the World Series. Instead, that advantage is reserved for the pennant-winning team with the better regular-season record.
From 2003-16, World Series home-field advantage was given to the team from the league that won that year’s All-Star Game, a rule that was installed after a 7-7 tie in the 2002 Midsummer Classic. And for the previous 98 editions of the World Series, home-field advantage simply alternated between the AL and NL depending on whether it was an odd or an even year.
As USA TODAY Sports noted when reporting on the 2017 rule changes, the All-Star winner receiving home-field advantage was initially a two-year experiment before being extended — though many baseball fans didn’t care for it. In that time frame, the American League won 11 of those 14 All-Star Games, and AL teams won eight World Series.