There is one NL playoff spot left worth arguing about, and the argument is basically over. The Padres are going, the Diamondbacks are not, and the gap is bigger than the standings make it look.
As of the standings published Sept. 14, San Diego holds the sixth and final NL spot at 81-68. Arizona sits at 79-71, 2.5 games back. That is close enough to sell a September narrative and far enough that the math has stopped cooperating.
SportsLine gives the Padres an 89.2% shot at the postseason. The Diamondbacks get 13.8%. When a projection system spreads two teams that far apart over 2.5 games, it is telling you something about how few games are left to close it.
Why Arizona is stuck
The Diamondbacks are not just chasing San Diego. Look at the full wild card board: Cubs 83-67, Phillies 83-67, both a game and a half up on the Padres, then San Diego, then Arizona. To get in, the Diamondbacks need to pass a team that is playing well enough to hold off two 83-win clubs.
Behind them, the Pirates at 75-75, Marlins at 74-76 and Cardinals at 74-76 are already 6.5 games or more out. So Arizona is alone in the chase, which sounds good until you realize it means nobody else is taking games off the Padres.
The division is a dead end too. The Dodgers lead the NL West at 90-59. San Diego is nine games back, Arizona 11.5. The Giants at 62-88 and Rockies at 55-94 are eliminated. There is exactly one door into the bracket for both of these teams, and the Padres are standing in it.
The bracket is already forming
If the season ended on those standings, the Brewers at 93-57 and Dodgers at 90-59 take the byes, with Milwaukee having already clinched the first NL berth on Friday night. The wild card round would be No. 3 Braves against No. 6 Padres, and No. 4 Cubs against No. 5 Phillies.
Atlanta is 88-62 and leads the NL East by five over Philadelphia. So the reward for San Diego surviving the last two weeks is a trip to face a team that has won six more games than them. That is the deal.
The market agrees with the projections, for whatever that is worth. Caesars had World Series odds as of Sept. 13 at Dodgers +180, Brewers +600, Braves +1300, Phillies +1500, Cubs +1800, Padres +2500 and Diamondbacks +6500. Arizona is priced as a long shot within a long shot, more than twice the number on the team directly ahead of them.
Here is my read. A 2.5 game deficit in mid-September is not an obstacle you overcome with effort. You need the team ahead of you to fall apart, and the Padres at 81-68 are not a club that has shown you a reason to expect that. They have been comfortably over .500 all the way through a division race with a 90-win Dodgers team, which is the hardest environment in the National League to bank wins.
Arizona’s problem is that its best stretch of the season needs to arrive at the same time as San Diego’s worst, and both have to happen inside a window that is closing. Betting on two things going right at once is how you end up watching October on television.
Give me the Padres. Not because they are an especially frightening playoff team, since the odds board makes clear nobody expects them to run through Milwaukee and Los Angeles. But holding a lead for two more weeks is a much easier assignment than erasing one, and San Diego only has to do the easy job.
The Diamondbacks were a fun story. The story just needed to start about three weeks earlier.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.