We’re already more than a quarter of the way through the 2026 MLB playoffs, which is hard to believe. But the Wild Card Series have come and gone, and the four League Division Series showdowns will wrap up within the coming days.
As of Oct. 5, we still haven’t seen a game go beyond 10 innings this postseason, which is excellent news for those of us who like falling asleep early. Yes, we all love a good 13-inning thriller, but we also like waking up at 5:30 a.m. without needing to put that extra bit of sugar in our coffee.
By now, you’re familiar with the “ghost runner” rule, which Major League Baseball introduced during the shortened 2020 season. If a regular-season game goes into extra innings, each team starts its half-inning with a runner on second base. The change, which became permanent in 2023, has been well received after some initial hesitation.
Is there a ghost runner in the 2026 MLB playoffs?
Good news for traditionalists: The 2026 MLB postseason does not feature a ghost runner, and all playoff games instead feature the since-retired extra-inning rules.
For those of you who only started watching baseball within the last few years, here’s a rundown (pun not intended) of how extra innings work in the postseason:
- Each team begins their respective half-inning with no runners on base. There are no exceptions.
- Extra-inning games are not sudden death. So if the Yankees and Rays go into extra innings at Tropicana Field, the Yankees would not automatically win if they took a 3-2 lead in the 10th. They’d need to close out the game, as they would in any other game.
- Players who previously left the game cannot re-enter. If the aforementioned Yankees-Rays game theoretically reached the 15th inning, Aaron Boone could not have David Bednar take the mound if the latter had already been relieved.
This should sound familiar to anyone who watched Game 3 of last year’s World Series. The Blue Jays and Dodgers battled for six hours and 39 minutes before Freddie Freeman hit a walk-off homer in the 18th inning.
Interestingly, the five longest games in postseason history have all gone 18 innings. The Dodgers also outlasted the Red Sox in Game 3 of the 2018 World Series, an 18-inning thriller that spanned seven hours and 20 minutes, the longest on record in terms of time.
Major League Baseball has not indicated it plans to add a ghost runner for the postseason beginning in 2027.
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