MLB Postseason Betting Rules: Extra Innings, Rain and Suspended Games

The short version

• Extra innings count. Every operator we read settles money line, run line and totals on the final score, extra innings included.
• No automatic runner in the postseason. Rule 7.02(g) switches it off for every Wild Card, Division, Championship and World Series game.
• Rained out before the first pitch means void. If a game does not start on its scheduled day, local time, game bets are void at both operator families.
• Suspended mid-game is where they split. One family keeps bets open for up to 90 days on a suspended playoff game; the other says suspended games do not carry over.
• Read the series rule before a series bet. One family’s text ties series bets to the originally scheduled end date.

Extra innings without the runner on second

In the regular season, Rule 7.01(b)(2) says each half-inning after the ninth “will begin with a runner on second base”. That runner is there to shorten extra innings. Rule 7.02(g) then removes it for October: “The Major Leagues have determined that Rule 7.01(b)(2) (runner on second base in Extra Innings) does not apply to any Wild Card Series, Division Series, League Championship Series or World Series games.”

For your bet, that means a tied postseason game can go on much longer than a tied game in July, and a totals or run line bet stays open for all of it. Neither operator family we read stops the clock at nine innings: extra innings count.

Rain in October: called, postponed or suspended

In the regular season the rulebook is clear. Under Rule 7.01(d), a game called after five completed innings, or after four and a half with the home team ahead, is a regulation game and the score stands, unless the score is level or the visitors have just tied or taken the lead in an unfinished inning: then it becomes a suspended game under Rule 7.02 and is finished later from the exact point where it stopped.

Rule 7.02(g) gives the postseason its own room. Notwithstanding the rules on calling and suspending games, it says, “the Major Leagues may adopt different rules for postponing, suspending, calling, resuming, and/or completing any games” in the Wild Card Series, Division Series, League Championship Series or World Series. The 2008 World Series, below, shows what that has meant in practice: a game stopped by rain was suspended and finished two days later.

The rules of the game and the rules of your bet are two different documents. Operators write their own settlement rules, and the next table shows that they do not all follow the rulebook to the end. How the same question works in football, where an abandoned match has its own settlement rules, is in our guide to abandoned and postponed matches.

A real case: Game 5 of the 2008 World Series

On 27 October 2008 in Philadelphia, heavy rain stopped Game 5 between the Phillies and the Rays in the middle of the sixth inning, with the score 2–2. The game was suspended, not called, and completed on 29 October from the point where it stopped. The Phillies won it 4–3 and with it the World Series. After five complete innings the Phillies led 2–1.

Here is how the operator rules we read today would settle bets on that game. The rules are applied to a past game to show how they work; they are not how bets were settled in 2008.

• Operator A, money line: the postseason clause keeps the bet open until the game is completed, well within 90 days. Phillies won.
• Operator A, total runs 6.5: the final score counts: seven runs, over won. A £10 bet on the over at decimal odds of 1.90 returns £19.
• Operator A, run line: the Phillies won by one run, so Phillies −1.5 lost and Rays +1.5 won.
• Operator B, total runs 3.5: four runs had been scored when play stopped, so the total had already gone over and the bet stands as a winner.
• Operator B, total runs 6.5 and run line: the game had not gone nine innings when it stopped and suspended games do not carry over, so these bets are void and the stake comes back.
• Operator B, first five innings: five innings were complete and the Phillies led 2–1, so a Phillies first-five-innings bet won.
• Operator B, match result: more than five innings had been played, so the five-inning line is met, but the score was level when play stopped. The text we read does not say how a match bet on a game abandoned level is settled. If a postseason forecast has rain in it, that is the question to ask before you bet.

To compare a price shown in fractions with one in decimals before you bet, the odds converter puts them side by side, and how betting odds work explains the arithmetic.

Betting during a long game

A postseason game that goes into extra innings without the automatic runner can keep an in-play market open for an hour or more beyond the ninth, and prices move after every pitch with runners on base. How in-play acceptance and price changes work is in our guide to in-play betting, and what an operator offers you to close a bet early is in our cash out guide. The same question of what counts after regulation time, in other North American sports, is answered in our guides to NHL overtime and shootouts and NFL overtime and ties.