NEW YORK -- October weather has become less of a concern. All of Major League Baseball's future playoff games will be a minimum of nine innings, Commissioner Bud Selig announced on Thursday, in accordance with a rule change approved at the MLB owners meetings in Manhattan.

The league will codify the rule in the coming weeks to ensure that all postseason games, regardless of the length of any delay, will be played to completion. The change occurs less than one month after World Series Game 5 between the Phillies and Rays was suspended for two days due to heavy rains and unplayable conditions at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia.

"It's virtually done," Selig said, "that all postseason games, the All-Star Game, will be full-length affairs, and the rule will be so written."

Prior to World Series Game 5, which began in the rain, Selig notified officials from both the Phillies and Rays that the game would be played to its completion -- regardless of whether or not it would all take place on the originally scheduled date of Oct. 27. Then, with the game tied, 2-2, in the middle of the sixth inning, Selig decided to suspend play.

The game was originally rescheduled to begin the following day, though continued rains pushed the restart date to Oct. 29, nearly two full days after the suspension. The Phillies eventually went on to win Game 5, clinching their first World Series in 28 years.

The Commissioner said he was opposed to ending any World Series game early.

"I have to use my judgment," Selig said shortly after Game 5 was suspended. "It's not a way to end a World Series."

Under the new rule, all non-regular season games will be played to their completion. That includes all three rounds of the playoffs, the All-Star Game (which ended tied in 2002, prompting a rule change to award the winning league home-field advantage in the World Series) and any one-game playoffs to determine division or Wild Card winners.

"It will be very clear now," Selig said of the rule.

No World Series game has ever been shortened due to rain. Prior to 1980, rules stated that a game called due to inclement weather would revert to the score at the beginning of the inning. That would have cost the Rays the tying run they scored in the top of the sixth inning -- and the game. But rule 4.12(a)(6), which Selig cited during the Series, states that any official game halted with the score tied "shall become a suspended game that must be completed at a future date."

The league on Thursday used Selig's interpretation of that rule, along with his statement that he wouldn't, as Commissioner, allow a World Series game to be shortened, as a basis to begin codifying the rule. The new rule will add clarity to the old one.