You would think that by the end of a 162-game season, it would be easier to separate the haves from the have-nots. But in just the past two decades of Major League Baseball, there have been a ton of pennant races that weren't decided until Game 162.

Some even required a Game 163 tiebreaker.

Before we dive in, let's acknowledge that "pennant race" is a rather archaic term. There hasn't really been a pennant race since MLB added the League Championship Series in 1969, and it definitely hasn't been a pennant race since they split each league into three divisions and added a wild-card spot before the 1994 season. But we still use the term loosely when referring to a playoff spot (or multiple spots, preferably) decided in the final few days of the regular season.

So, what makes a good pennant race?

First and foremost, a close finish is a must. If two teams are basically tied for the entirety of April-August only for one of them to pull away and clinch the division with a week to go, no one is going to remember.

In fact, the opposite scenario makes for a more intriguing pennant race. If there's a 10-game gap between two teams for most of the season before either the front-runner collapses or the trailing squad catches fire, that makes for great theatre.

And the more the merrier. A two-horse race for one spot is nice. A three-horse race for one spot is better. But once you start talking about five teams battling for three spots with all sorts of potential tiebreaker scenarios in play heading into the final weekend or even the final day of the regular season, now you're cooking with gas.

Household names and hallmark teams never hurt, either. Alex Rodriguez and the New York Yankees jostling with David Ortiz and the Boston Red Sox for both the AL East and the AL MVP is inherently more intriguing than a photo finish between Minnesota and Detroit.

But one thing that doesn't factor into the greatness of a pennant race is what happens in the postseason. In most cases, we'll briefly touch on how well (or poorly) the race winner fared in the playoffs, but that information played no factor in the rankings.

Honorable Mentions

2004 NL Wild Card: With 10 days remaining in the season, the Dodgers, Giants, Cubs, Astros and Padres were all separated by 4.5 games. LAD, SFG or SDP would be the NL West champion, but the other four were battling for the wild card. Houston went 9-1 while Chicago, San Francisco and San Diego all finished 5-5 or worse.

2008 NL Wild Card: With a lot of help from the New York Mets going 6-9 in their final 15 games, the Milwaukee Brewers rode midseason acquisition CC Sabathia to the playoffs. After arriving from Cleveland, Sabathia made 17 starts with a 1.65 ERA with seven complete games. That includes the do-or-die regular-season finale, when he allowed just one unearned run despite pitching on three days' rest for the third consecutive time. It was one of the greatest individual efforts in this sport of the past two decades, and it's a crying shame that he didn't win the NL Cy Young Award.

2012 AL East: The day after Labor Day, the Yankees and Orioles were tied for first place while the Rays sat just 1.5 games back. Tampa Bay would lose nine of its next 12 games to drop out of the hunt, but it still played a key factor. Baltimore and New York were tied at 92-67 heading into the final three games: Yankees hosting Boston and Baltimore at Tampa. The Rays won two out of three, while the Yanks swept and won the division.

2013 AL Wild Cards: In the final 11 days of the regular season, Tampa Bay and Texas both put together seven-game winning streaks. But they ended up in a tie for the second wild-card spot, one game behind Cleveland, which won 15 of its final 17 games, including each of the final 10. It was all for naught, though. Tampa Bay beat Texas in the tiebreaker and also beat Cleveland in the Wild Card Game before getting knocked out by Boston in the ALDS.

2015 NL Central: It wasn't a photo finish, but the St. Louis Cardinals (100-62), Pittsburgh Pirates (98-64) and Chicago Cubs (97-65) posted the three best records in the major leagues. While the 88-win Texas Rangers and 90-win New York Mets went straight to the ALDS and NLDS, it seemed cruel that the Pirates and Cubs had to play a one-game tiebreaker for the right to face the Cardinals.

2016 NL Wild Cards: Not quite as wild as the 2013 American League situation, but the Mets, Cardinals and Giants were all tied at 80-72 with 10 games to play. Both the Mets and Giants went 7-3, while the Cardinals lost four of the first six games during that closing stretch and fell one game short.

9. The 2010 NL West and Wild Card

For the entire month of September, the San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants were separated by three games or fewer. The Padres finished Sept. 1 up by three games. The Giants then went 17-8 and entered Oct. 1 up by three games.

But they wrapped up the regular season with a head-to-head series in San Francisco that almost made the entire NL playoff picture quite messy.

Heading into that weekend, the Philadelphia Phillies had clinched the NL East and the No. 1 seed, and that's about all we knew for certain. The Cincinnati Reds had also clinched the NL Central, but whether they would finish ahead of the NL West champion was yet to be determined. The Reds were two games behind the Giants and one game ahead of the Padres.

That seeding was important because the Braves held a two-game lead over the Padres for the wild card. And if the Braves did secure the wild card, the No. 2 seed would have home-field advantage against Atlanta while the No. 3 seed had to open things up against Philadelphia.

But Atlanta lost on Friday and Saturday while San Diego won its first two games against San Francisco. Thus, heading into the final day of the season, it was San Francisco at 91-70 followed by a three-way tie between Atlanta, Cincinnati and San Diego at 90-71.

Atlanta and Cincinnati both won their early afternoon games, which left everyone sweating out the Padres-Giants result.

If San Diego had won, all four teams would have been 91-71, meaning there would have been another game between the Padres and Giants, but they first would have traveled 500 miles down the California coast to play that game in San Diego, since the Padres had the better head-to-head record. The loser of that game then would have had to fly across the country to Atlanta for a wild-card tiebreaker.

On top of that, Cincinnati likely would have been locked in as the No. 3 seed due to an inferior head-to-head record against both San Diego and San Francisco, but they wouldn't have known until after the Wild Card Game whether they would be playing at Philadelphia (if Atlanta won the wild card) or at SDP/SFG (if the NL West runner-up won the wild card).

However, the Padres were unable to score a single run in a 3-0 loss, making San Francisco the NL West champ and Atlanta the wild card. And that was the beginning of the "Even Year Giants," who won the World Series in 2010, 2012 and 2014.

8. The 2012 AL West

It doesn't get much better than some late-September and early-October head-to-head battles to determine a division winner. And in 2012, the Oakland Athletics and the Texas Rangers squared off seven times in the final 10 days to crown the AL West champion.

The Los Angeles Angels were also in that mix. With seven days remaining in the regular season, they were two games behind Oakland for the second wild-card spot and five games behind the Rangers in the West. Three of their final seven games were against Texas, and on the other four days when the Angels were facing sub-.500 Seattle, the A's and Rangers were facing each other.

Had they won those final seven games, the Angels might have won the division. At the very least, they would have either locked up a wild-card spot or forced a three-way tie atop the AL West. Instead, they lost four of those games and ended up nowhere close.

The Angels did play a key factor, though, while Oakland had the type of end-of-season flourish that the Angels were hoping for.

After a walk-off loss at Texas on Sept. 24—Oakland's third walk-off loss in the span of four days—the A's were five games behind the Rangers with nine games remaining. Their odds of winning the division were rather slim, but they had six games left against Texas to flip the script.

They won five of those six games and swept a three-games series against the Mariners in between for an 8-1 finish to the regular season. If it hadn't been for Los Angeles taking two out of three at Texas while the A's were sweeping the M's, the Rangers still would have won the division. But they wilted down the stretch with a 2-7 record.

Oakland and Texas were tied heading into the final day of the regular season for a game in which Texas jumped out to a 5-1 lead in the third inning. Oakland then scored 11 unanswered runs to win the division.

7. The 2008 and 2009 AL Central

Most of the memorable pennant races are two-week stretches at the end of the season where one team catches fire, the leader collapses or both. But the race for the 2008 AL Central title was a 162-game marathon between the Chicago White Sox and the Minnesota Twins.

Save for a one-week stretch in the first half of June when Chicago briefly opened up a six-game lead after a four-game sweep of Minnesota, the two sides were within four games of each other for the entire season.

From June 20 onward, the greatest gap was three games.

And when the White Sox trekked up to Minnesota with a 2.5-game lead and just six days remaining in the regular season, a three-game sweep punctuated by a 10th-inning walk-off briefly put the Twins ahead by a half-game.

Had the Twins taken care of business against the hadn't-made-the-playoffs-since-1985 Kansas City Royals, Minnesota would've been able to punch its ticket. However, two disappointing home losses to the Royals opened the door for Chicago to force a Game 163 tiebreaker.

Chicago's John Danks pitched eight innings of shutout, two-hit baseball, and a Jim Thome solo home run in the seventh inning proved to be the difference in a 1-0 White Sox victory.

At least things went better for Minnesota the following year. Detroit had a seven-game lead over the Twins on Labor Day, but the Tigers went 11-15 the rest of the way, setting up a second consecutive Game 163 for AL Central glory. Somewhat symbolically, the Tigers blew a 10th-inning lead in a game the Twins won in 12 innings.

In the end, neither race much mattered, though. Both the 2008 White Sox and the 2009 Twins immediately lost in the ALDS. Chicago went down in four games against Tampa Bay; Minnesota was swept by New York. But the journeys were fun up until that point.

6. The 2006 NL West, Central and Wild Card

The New York Mets plowed through the National League during the 2006 regular season. They clinched the NL East crown on Sept. 18 and locked up home-field advantage on Sept. 21.

But everything else came right down to the wire.

Two days before the Mets secured the No. 1 seed, the St. Louis Cardinals seemed to be on the verge of wrapping up an NL Central title. They had a seven-game lead over the Cincinnati Reds and an 8.5-game edge over the Houston Astros with less than two weeks left to play.

But a seven-game losing streak erased those cushions in a hurry. Heading into the final weekend, the Cardinals had just a half-game lead over Houston and a 2.5-game lead over Cincinnati. Had they ended up either ahead or behind by a half-game, they would've had to play the San Francisco Giants on Monday as a makeup from a game that was rained out in mid-September. But Houston and Cincinnati both lost twice, while the Cardinals went 2-1 to win the division.

Elsewhere, the San Diego Padres, Los Angeles Dodgers and Philadelphia Phillies were basically in a three-way tie entering play on Sept. 21. The Padres were 79-72 while the Dodgers and Phillies were both 79-73. Both the NL West and NL Wild Card hung in the balance. (The San Francisco Giants were also just four games behind the Padres at that point, but they completely fall apart, going 2-13 in their final 15 games.)

The Phillies went 6-4 the rest of the way, only to wind up nowhere close as the Padres and Dodgers went a combined 18-3 down the stretch. (Playing zero games against each other didn't hurt.) They both finished 88-74, with San Diego winning the division thanks to a 13-5 record in head-to-head games.

Despite the worst closing stretch of the National League teams to make the playoffs, St. Louis caught fire in October and won the World Series.

5. The 2004 AL West

Gotta love a three-horse race for a single playoff spot.

In the entire 2004 season, there was never more than a 6.5-game gap between first place and third place in the AL West. The Oakland A's, Anaheim Angels and Texas Rangers each spent at least 30 days in first place, though it was Oakland in the driver's seat for most of August and September.

With 10 days remaining in the regular season, the A's held a two-game lead over both the Rangers and the Angels. And by that point, there was virtually no hope for the AL West runner-up to earn the wild-card spot with the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox jostling for best record in the American League.

Of the trio, Texas had the most favorable schedule: six games against a woefully rebuilding Seattle Mariners team and four home games against the Angels. Oakland's schedule wasn't too bad, either, with four home games against the Mariners between a pair of three-game series against the Angels.

But that meant Anaheim had the most opportunistic schedule, controlling its own destiny.

The Angels capitalized, thanks to a lot of help from Vladimir Guerrero.

In that four-game series in Texas, the future Hall of Fame right-fielder went 12-for-17 with five home runs. He also had an outfield assist in the one game of the series that went to extra innings, cutting down Kevin Mench at the plate on a would-be sacrifice fly. Guerrero also clubbed a two-run dinger in a 5-4 victory over Oakland on the next-to-last day of the regular season—the win that clinched Anaheim's AL West title.

The Angels went 4-2 against Oakland and 3-1 against Texas in those final 10 games. Unfortunately, it set them up with a first-round matchup with the eventual World Series champions. After expending all that energy just to reach the postseason, the Angels were swept by the Red Sox.

4. The 2018 NL Central, West and Wild Cards

From 1995-2011, winning the division didn't provide much of a competitive advantage over settling for the wild card. During the 17-year span of four playoff teams per league, the wild-card team made it deeper into the postseason than the team that won its division 12 times and was knocked out before its division winner 13 times, and there were nine cases of both teams immediately losing in the division series. So, basically no difference.

With the expansion to five playoff teams per league, though, winning the division is significantly more important, as it means getting to avoid the do-or-die Wild Card Game in which, even if you won, you probably used the ace of your staff and will then only have him for one game of the subsequent division series.

So when both the NL Central and NL West came down to "Game 163" tiebreakers in 2018, it was a huge deal.

In the Central, the Chicago Cubs had been in first place since before the All-Star break. It was never a commanding lead, maxing out at five games in early September, but it was a constant lead all the same.

On Sept. 18, the Milwaukee Brewers lost a home game to the last-place Cincinnati Reds, the Cubs beat the Arizona Diamondbacks 9-1, and it seemed like Chicago's 3.5-game lead would be more than enough. But the Cubs lost five of their final 11 games while Milwaukee reeled off nine wins in 10 games to force a tiebreaker, which they won at Wrigley Field.

At the same time, the Colorado Rockies put together a "nine wins in 10 games" closing stretch of their own to draw even with the Los Angeles Dodgers. On the final day of the regular season, Colorado beat Washington 12-0 and Los Angeles beat San Francisco 15-0, emphatically setting up an NL West tiebreaker that was won by the Dodgers.

After both avoiding the dreaded play-in game, both the Brewers and Dodgers easily won their division series in advance of an NLCS that went the full seven games.

3. The 2011 AL and NL Wild Cards

The division "races" were terribly boring in 2011, and if this ridiculous finish had transpired one year later after the addition of a second wild-card team, it also would have been uneventful.

As is, it was one of the few "I remember where I was when..." days of regular-season baseball in the past 20 years.

In the American League's wild-card chase, the Boston Red Sox entered play on Sept. 7 with an eight-game lead over the Tampa Bay Rays and an 8.5-game lead over the Los Angeles Angels. Over the next six days, Tampa Bay won five in a row, including a three-game sweep of Boston during its five-game losing streak. All of a sudden, it was a legitimate battle.

The following week, the Rays took three out of four from the Red Sox. The Angels also gained some ground and entered the final week of the regular season tied with Tampa Bay, 2.5 games behind Boston.

The Angels went 1-6 down the stretch and dropped completely out of contention, but Tampa Bay closed the gap, and the two AL East teams were tied heading into the final day. Tampa Bay was facing the 97-win Yankees, while Boston was playing the 93-loss Orioles, so it seemed to be advantage: Red Sox.

But after striking out the first two Orioles in the ninth inning, Jonathan Papelbon gave up three consecutive hits and blew the save for an Orioles walk-off. Meanwhile, Tampa Bay erased a 7-0 deficit with six runs in the eighth inning and a two-out, pinch-hit home run by Dan Johnson in the ninth. The Rays later won on an Evan Longoria home run in the 12th inning to punch their ticket to the postseason.

In the National League, the Atlanta Braves had a three-game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals with just five days remaining. But in those final five days, the Braves scored a grand total of seven runs in five consecutive losses. That included a 13th-inning heartbreaker on the final day against the Philadelphia Phillies, who, by the way, had already clinched home-field advantage a week before and had no reason to care about that game. That didn't stop them from forcing extra innings with a Craig Kimbrel blown save.

While the Braves collapsed, the Cardinals soared, going 4-1 down the stretch and clinching their spot with an 8-0 victory in the last game.

And though the Rays were immediately eliminated by the Texas Rangers, the Cardinals went on to win the World Series.

2. The 2005 AL East and Wild Card

Over the years, there have been plenty of fantastic playoff pushes involving small-market teams.

But a photo finish between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees?

One year after the famous (or infamous, depending on your slant) 2004 ALCS in which the Red Sox became the (still) only team in MLB history to win a seven-game series after trailing 3-0?

Oh, yeah. That's the good stuff.

With two weeks remaining in the 2005 season, the Red Sox held a half-game lead over the Yankees in the AL East. And throughout those final two weeks, neither side led by more than a game. The poor Baltimore Orioles were a sacrificial lamb for those jockeying contenders, playing 11 consecutive games against Boston and New York and losing 10 of them.

But while the Yankees and Red Sox battled each other in the division standings, this wasn't a "Well, if we don't win it, at least we'll still get in with the wild card" situation.

With just eight days left in the season, the Red Sox and Yankees were tied at 90-64, three games behind the Chicago White Sox (93-61) and 1.5 games behind the Cleveland Indians (92-62). Considering the Red Sox and Yankees had a three-game head-to-head series to close out the season—meaning at least one of them was going to lose at least two more games—it was likely that the AL Central runner-up would get the wild card.

However, the Indians lost three of their next four games, setting up a final weekend for the ages:

• Chicago (96-63) at Cleveland (93-66)
• New York (94-65) at Boston (93-66)

Even if the Indians swept the White Sox, the latter had already clinched the division via head-to-head record. (Had there been a tie for the wild card, Cleveland also would have lost that, as the Indians went 2-4 against Boston and 3-4 against New York.) But between trying to get home-field advantage and the thrill of getting to knock a rival out of the postseason picture, Chicago found the motivation to sweep the Indians.

The Red Sox won the opener, so they were all knotted up heading into the final two games.

Sort of.

The Yankees had a 9-8 lead in the season series, which meant they would hold a 10-9 tiebreaker if the rivals split those final two games. That meant Boston had to sweep in order to win the division. The Yankees won Game 2, and then Boston won a meaningless Game 3 to both finish at 95-67.

So, perhaps it wasn't quite as dramatic as 1949 when the Yankees defeated the Red Sox on the final two days of the regular season to finish one game ahead of their rival for the American League pennant. Nor was it as frantic as 1978 when the Red Sox finished the season on an eight-game winning streak, forced a Game 163 tiebreaker against the Yankees and gave up five runs in the final three innings of a heart-wrenching 5-4 loss. But, still, easily one of the most incredible finishes in the past 40 years.

1. The 2007 NL West, East and Wild Card

With 15 days remaining in the 2007 regular season, the Colorado Rockies were a complete afterthought.

They were 76-72, which was only good enough for fourth place in the NL West, 6.5 games behind the Arizona Diamondbacks. Even in the wild-card conversation, Colorado was merely one of the five teams within 5.5 games of the San Diego Padres.

But, on the off chance they suddenly caught fire, the good news was their final 13 games were against the top three teams in the NL West, which meant they somewhat controlled their own destiny.

And catch fire they did.

The Rockies went 13-1 in their final 14 regular-season games, ending the season just one game back of the Arizona Diamondbacks and in a tie with the Padres for the wild card.

As it so happens, this was the first year that Major League Baseball decided to implement the "Game 163" tiebreaker as opposed to letting the regular season head-to-head record decide things. The Rockies went 10-8 against the Padres, which at least meant they got home-field advantage for the tiebreaker—which they won with three runs in the bottom of the 13th inning after allowing two runs in the top of the 13th.

As dramatic as it was, this almost devolved into complete and utter chaos.

Heading into the final day of the regular season, the Padres were 89-72, the Rockies were 88-73, and so were both the New York Mets and the Philadelphia Phillies. Had the Padres lost (they did), the Rockies won (they did), the Phillies won (they did) and the Mets won (oops), they all would have finished with the same record.

The tiebreaker plan if that happened was unbelievable. First, there would have been an NL East tiebreaker. Then, the loser of that game would have entered into a three-team "tournament" with the Padres and Rockies to determine who got the wild card. The whole thing would have postponed the start of the postseason by several days.

Fortunately, the Mets put the finishing touches on a meltdown for the ages, giving up seven first-inning runs in a loss to the lowly Florida Marlins. New York had the best record in the National League on Sept. 12, boasting a seven-game lead over the Phillies in the NL East. But despite ending the season with 14 consecutive games against sub-.500 competition, the Mets went 5-12 in their final 17 games while the Phillies went 13-4.