We’re in for a riveting couple of months in the National League, where the majority of franchises at least have a glimmer of a chance at earning a wild-card berth. Four teams are within 2 1/2 games of the currently Max Scherzer-less Nationals for the top spot, while another four are 2 1/2 or fewer behind the Phillies for the league’s fifth and final playoff position. And we can’t even fully rule out the Giants, Reds, Padres or Rockies – teams that range from four to 7 1/2 behind the Phillies. The odds are strongly against anyone from the San Francisco-Cincinnati-San Diego-Colorado quartet making a miracle run, but nobody expected the long-slumbering Mets to suddenly rip off 13 wins in 14 games to put themselves in the thick of the race.
Despite a season loaded with turmoil, the Mets’ out-of-nowhere stretch of brilliance has placed them just a game back of the Phillies. According to FanGraphs, New York now has the second-highest odds of the NL’s wild-card contenders, trailing only the Nationals. The Phillies, Cardinals, Brewers, Diamondbacks and Reds check in next, though FanGraphs ranks their chances significantly lower than those of the Nats and Mets. The only club from that group that’s not at least .500 is Cincinnati. The Reds are a subpar 54-58, but they’ve won seven of 10 and did just add a pair of notable pitchers in Trevor Bauer and Kevin Gausman (the Bauer acquisition came at the expense of outfielder Yasiel Puig, though). Meanwhile, the Diamondbacks lost the best pitcher from an already thin staff, Zack Greinke, whom they traded to the Astros at last week’s deadline. Arizona brought in a respectable back-end starter in Mike Leake, but he’s no Greinke.
Arguably no current wild-card contender did more to improve at the deadline than the Mets, who reeled in Marcus Stroman to complement ace Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard and Zack Wheeler near the top of their rotation. The majority of the other teams mentioned above also made deadline additions, but Bauer aside, Stroman may be the highest-upside pickup on paper.
MLBTR’s Jeff Todd asked Tuesday if the Mets would end up in the postseason, though the majority of voters said no. But if not them, then which two clubs will make it from the NL’s crowded field (one that could also include the division-leading Braves and Cubs)?
(Poll link for app users)
LFGM!!!
LFGM
LFGM!
LAME
LOL
lol
I think Nats and Brewers. Phillies Pitching just isn’t good. It’s basically Nola, pray for rain, pray for rain, and 2 LHP journeyman
been praying all year and no one’s answered – even God has forsaken this team.
correct me if Im wrong, but i dont think the brew crew has pitching either? at least not starters
Phillies have also been outscored this season by 21 runs. Below average hitting, meh pitching, bad bullpen. I think the Nats, Brewers, Reds, Mets, Dbacks (maybe not without Greinke now, though) and Padres are all better teams than Philly.
Mets and Nats.
My biased opinion is the Nats and Reds
Mets look good right now. Peaking at the right time.
They’ve played the soft spot in their schedule so let’s see how they look in the next 4 weeks. I’m not sure I’m buying the Mets sudden rise.
Huge series this weekend.
True, but 19-6 over the last 25 is still impressive
Nats I think have the most consistent offense. And starters. Mets are right in there. Might be interesting to see them put heat on till the end. Brews don’t have the starters. But great offense in that ballpark. Plus Yelich. Cards are hot n cold. Like Goldschmidt’s bat. Phil’s are down there. A lot of .500 teams on this list. Reds too. A .500 ballclub at they’re height. I picked the Nats n Giants. I’m a Giants Fan. I have hope. Maybe slightly blindly. But still early with two months to go. And D backs are good bad everywhere… Same same. .500 ballclub.
Will be pretty interesting that rest of the way. I don’t see too much major separation happening down the stretch.
Hey. The Giants 13.5 games back one August. But cameback to go to the WS. You can never be completely sure until teams are eliminated.
Nationals, for sure. Then I’d like to see the Mets get in. They’re going to have to hope the duct tape can hold their bullpen together down the stretch. But maybe it will. They definitely have the most interesting rotation out of any other contender.
i pray im wrong, but i have to say Nats and Cards. at least i can rest easy knowing i really dont believe – yet still fear – the Mets
Giants had their hot streak for the year
And it came at the worst possible time. Not selling Bumgarner and Smith was so dysfunctional. Something I didn’t expect from Zaidi
Bumgarner has a no trade clause.
He would have gone to a contender and it removes any QO if he accepted a trade. He would have waived it
You don’t know that. When did he say he would waive the no trade clause?
He only had a no trade to 8 teams so he could not even block a deal everywhere….
Really only 1 or 2 of the teams that weren’t on the list would have been interested in trading for him
Waiving the NTC means he gets to pitch for a team with a better chance of going all the way this year and makes him ineligible for a QO. Absolutely he would have accepted a trade. Don’t think for even a second that the Giants are going to not QO him as a showing of goodwill or whatever.
And it came at the worst possible time.
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Same with the RS. They absolutely crushed TB and the NYY. Up until those two series, I was hoping they would sell, including Betts. Then it looked like 2018 all over again.
Once the deadline passed, it looked like 2014 all over again.
LFGM!
The Pirates were in it but, evidently, their amateur scouts decided there was someone they really, really like near the top of next year’s draft.
I’m a Cardinals fan but they just don’t have the pitching in my mind to keep up with the Mets or Nationals! We don’t have a good closer and even if Mikolas and Flaherty can keep it up behind them they have Hudson who looks like he might have hit his wall and then Wainwright who is really good at home but not so good away and then just FLIP A COIN after that! As far as our offense, well after 110 games it is what it is! Very inconsistent and terrible at situational hitting! I truly hope they prove me terribly wrong!!
I would love to see Giants vs Cardinals (NLCS rematch and a clash of two clubs which play the game the right way) but my guess is Nats vs Cardinals.
Not to mention Giants and Cardinals are both teams that have consistent fan bases and go against the “tank” trend in the MLB. Would be so great to see these two play in a winner-take all again just like back in 2012.
“Play the game the right way”. You know who plays the right way? The Dodgers and Astros who actually win games. Thats more valuable than playing it “right” while staying mediocre. The Giants mistakes have nothing to do with tanking. Its not selling while they had a chance at a good return
They started the decline of the sport. The crazy shifts and launch angle. It’s whats driving the modern fan away from baseball. Contact hitting is becoming more and more a thing of the past and the average time between balls being put in play is going up. Not enough action anymore. Just a bunch of strikeouts, walks, pop flies, and homeruns that are influenced by juiced balls.
Everyone looks for an edge. Throughout history that’s how it goes. Eventually someone will find a way to beat the launch angle phenomenon and we’ll find our way somewhere else. Maybe right back to the old contact game of baseball, particularly if they change the ball.
Don’t think that’s what’s killing the sport at all though. Baseball is inherently a slow game. A game with a bunch of steals and singles is still a slow game versus any other professional sports. I’m obviously a baseball fan but I can accept the reality of things. It’s a slower game and that’s a tougher sell than a game like Football or basketball which is constant action. No matter what you do.
You are really yelling at clouds. The shift works more often than it doesn’t. The Cardinals improved defense this season is a resut of shifting more. No one is being turned off baseball because of launch angle thats just ridiculous. Players who get on base are being valued more than ever. Old school baseball is dying because its proven obsolete. The Royals were the last team to win on that model. There is a reason they fell off fast and other old school teams fell behind.
I can agree that it was ignorant of me to blame the teams for the decline, but one thing is for certain. The technology they are enforcing is definitely contributing to the sports decline. It’s not their fault, it’s smart of them to try to get the best out of their team, but let me defend my case on why this new tech is killing the sport.
The length of a baseball game is not the problem. The length has been the same and is what makes your money’s worth when going out to see a ballgame. The problem is that it takes an average 6 minutes between every ball put in play. Why? Shifts and launch angle. With advanced shifts making hitting the ball on the ground essentially useless, it emphasizes launch angle. You can’t hit a ground ball up the middle for a hit anymore, so why even settle for hitting the ball on the ground? Launch Angle then leads to high strikeout rates which leads to the increase of time between balls put in play.
We were all casual fans at some point of our lives, and baseball is not a sport for everyone, but with the way the game is going now it’s not even giving people a chance to get into it. If you watch a snipit of a game chances are you are watching a pop up or a strikeout. Not exciting at all.
Football…constant action? Not from the footage I’ve seen.
Constant action wasn’t the best word for football but there’s a lot more excitement in football. A single to drive home a runner from 2nd base just doesn’t have the appeal of a 20 yard touchdown pass to most people….Just
reality. Might the game be more exciting if it’s played inside the park? Maybe so, but i highly doubt changing from HRS to singles and doubles steals is going to give baseball a shot in the arm.
I mean the royals largely still play an old school game and I don’t see anybody lining up to go watch them play. Preferences changes over time and that’s really where baseball is at. I don’t know how you get more people into it. It’ll be an interesting to see how they try.
I understand what you’re saying and don’t necessarily disagree. I just get a little bit tired of the constant concerns over the way baseball is played and yet fans will tolerate the countless tv timeouts during a football game. Not to mention the fascination there is year round with whatever OTA or non-mandatory minicamp is taking place.
They started the decline of the sport. The crazy shifts and launch angle.
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The shifts have been around forever. We were doing that in little league 50 years ago.
IRT launch angle, every sport adapts and changes. I’ve lived through nickel backs, then dime backs, the 4/3 and the 3/4. Basketball has almost eliminated the mid-range jumper in favor of the 3-pointer or in the paint.
Right here.
I can’t stand TTO and have gone from watching (at least parts of) 6-10 non-local games a week and watching MLB Network more than any other channel to watching almost no non-local games and aside from 3 hours or so on trade deadline day, watching no MLB Network for months.
The home run has been so cheapened, it’s as exciting as a free throw and the rest of the game has been hollowed out.
What is good for any individual team is different than what is good for the sport. Very few of the recent changes are good for the actual sport.
Eventually someone will find a way to beat the launch angle
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Ted Williams spoke of this 70 years ago. The only difference is that today, we can measure it.
And a return to the bunt will eliminate a large part of the shift. A lead-off bunt single is probably more valuable than the 1-20 chance of a lead-off HR.
I think football is just about the dullest sport ever invented. A person who really likes football is probably never going to get equal pleasure out of baseball unless the players started beating on each other with bats.
I keep hearing how baseball fans don’t appreciate any of the intricacies of the game that make it special, and only watch for the home runs, but everything I know and see contradicts that theory. Why just yesterday the Dodgers won a game with a walk-off two-out two-strike soft slap-hit up the middle in the bottom of the 9th. Running the bases and the fielding and throwing of baseballs were also involved. The fans seemed pretty excited.
The Royals are a small-market team who’ve had only one, brief competitive window in decades and once again are pretty dreadful. That’s why people aren’t lining up to watch them, not because they play “old school.”
As for how you get more people to watch the game (assuming it’s a real problem), that’s another subject.
This just reads as a completely defensive stance. I prefer baseball also but I live in reality. Regardless of your opinion on football it’s the most popular sport in America. By a wide margin. That’s just a fact. Baseball attendance has declined for 14 straight years. That’s a pattern. Not a good one for MLB. I don’t think bunts and double steals are going to change that. Maybe I’m wrong; I hope I am.
I guess I could be more offensive if you prefer! My opinion about football is my opinion about football. It’s the reason I cannot watch it. McDonald’s is really popular too but I think the food stinks. It’s the reason I don’t eat it. I don’t want my favorite game or my favorite food to be more like junk just so more people will watch it or eat it. I also don’t see where the team owners are concerned about the number of fans watching the game. Their revenues are skyrocketing, somehow.
The sport could do more to popularize the game without changing anything in the way it’s played. First, make it more of an effort to support baseball at the youth level. Basketball and football and soccer have done this better. Second, make it more accessible to audiences who might not have been marinated in the game growing up. The play-by-play now is all about analysis and jock talk. Nobody explains the game anymore. I have to hit the mute button many times now because that chatter doesn’t add anything to the appreciation of the game, it only distracts from it.
Reality is overrated.
Hey, look I’m with you. I hope baseball takes off. I don’t think that’s the likely scenario though. You’ve got your own guys like Tim Anderson coming out and ragging on about how boring it is. Definitely not a good look. I think ultimately they’ll start building smaller stadiums because I think the attendance dip is a real thing. Baseball certainly isn’t in trouble but like any business they want to grow and grow and grow. I just don’t see that kind of growth for the game. I hope I’m wrong though.
Not sure how Tim Anderson became one on my own guys but either way I’m not looking for any player to speak for the sport. I don’t know about smaller stadiums as a solution to anything. Some cities are just not good baseball towns. Others pack them in year after year.
Own guys as in Baseball. Pretty clear you’re an LA fan. But if you don’t think smaller stadiums aren’t coming you aren’t paying attention. They’re already here. Atlanta built a stadium with 12K seats less than Turner Field had. Texas’ new stadium has 9k less. That’s literally how we’re moving. I’m not making this up.
What’s wrong with the return they got at the deadline? How do you know they could have gotten more?
For Bumgarner, Watson and Smith. I think that’s pretty obvious. They definitely would’ve gotten more. That’s not even an argument. You know they didn’t and they went for it. But, that’s fine. Not my choice but it’s a choice.
Madison Bumgarner would have got bacm a decent return. Will Smith was a massive asset they failed to capitalize on. Best relief pitcher on the market
What is wrong with what they received at the trade deadline? How do you know Bumgarner was willing to waive his no trade clause.
What is wrong with what they received at the trade deadline. How do you know Bumgarner would have waived his no trade clause.
They did not get any needle movers for their rebuild. Nice job turning in Dyson, Pomeranz and shredding Melancons deal but it did nothing for them long term. Only trading Smith and Bum moves the needle. And Hum did not have the power to veto every deal
Teams are not going to mortgage their future for rentals. So, no needle movers.
You can use what ever verbiage you want. But they could’ve gotten potential everyday players for Bum and Smith. They did that for Pom and Ray Black. They weren’t going to get a superstar in the making but 2+ potential quality regular for 3 months of 2 rentals further moves things along. There’s no argument that they wouldn’t have gotten more. They 100% would’ve gotten more. Maybe not enough to move their timeframe up any amount of time but it would’ve been more.
They didn’t go in that direction and they’re 1-7 since. Was pretty predictable but it was their choice. Dealing those 2 would’ve been a tough sell in SF with the spot they were in at the deadline. I get all that.
“Teams are not going to mortgage their future for rentals. So, no needle movers.”
Gleyber Torres says hi
I would loved to see Torres in a Cubs uniform, but winning the World Series was totally worth it.
Cubs don’t even make the World Series without Chapman, that bullpen was not in good shape
Vince is in denial. As a big market team, I understand wanting to make a run at the playoffs. But Vince is acting like nobody trades prospects anymore.
Chisolm #60, Sanchez 60, Baskukas 80, and Trammell 20, all got traded.
MadBum & Smith both would’ve netted top-100 prospects, maybe slightly more.
The Mets have taken advantage of a weak schedule since the All-Star break. That isn’t their fault. You can only beat the teams you play. They start a stretch where the schedule gets tougher now. They have put themselves in a good position, but things can change quickly. If they lose 4 of 5 to the Nationals & Braves in their next two series, things could be a lot different.
Yup. They are about to fall down again. They beat the teams they were supposed to and some of the teams they beat since the asg should have beaten them. It goes both ways. Prediction… the finish under .500 in 4th place. Brodie gets fired next year after another 4th place finish and higher payroll.
The Mets also have something like 30 of their last 48 games at home. They played a TON on the road in the beginning of the season. The next 2-3 wks has legit teams with nary a break. It’s also worth noting that the Mets have the easiest post-AS break schedule.
Not a chance for the hapless Phillies with their idiotic manager. The smirking waves and hubris from a few months ago is long gone.
Mets vs winner between Giants & Brewers.
I put Cardinals and other. Other being the Braves, cause the Nats are gonna win the division
Nats, Phillies
Has to be nats and brewers
I doubt the bum will sustain anything once they actually play good teams.
Ha!
Mets…
Ha!
Y’all remember the last two times the Cardinals won the World Series they limped into the playoffs and got hot? Pepperidge Farm remembers….
Nationals and somebody else. Don’t see how any guess about the someone else makes much sense now with the NLC being a three-way tossup.
Mets and Brewers for WC1 & WC2….playoff game at CitiField! The Phillies will continue to sink. The Nats have Scherzer and Rendon on the IL, which makes them vulnerable.
And the Mets won’t be able to beat up on the Marlins (7), Giants, Padres, Pirates (7), & White Soxs.
Hats off if they can navigate through the Nats (6), Indians, Phillies (6), Braves (9), Cubs, & Dodgers.
You can post the short term downfalls of all the teams fighting for the wild card if you’re be truthful.
Braves and Mets. I think the Nats overtake the Braves for the division.
Half of the Braves games remaining are against the Mets, Nats and Phils. with 4 teams in the NL East within reach of playoff spots, it should be an interesting remainder of the season.
The Cubs have a higher chance of falling into the Wild Card than the Reds have at being a contender for it.
The Cubs have 48 games left, 27 of them are away. They have the absolute worst away record for a team over .500
I see nobody arguing for the DBacks when they still have 9 games against SD, 6 COL, 6 SF, 6 CIN, and 3 MIA. Their worst matchups are 7 LA, 3 MIL, 3 STL, (debatably) 4 NYM. 26 home games and 21 road left (the shortest stay at home will be 6 games, while the longest road trip will be 7 games).
They have Walker, Peralta, Dyson, and Lamb putting up WAR at essentially a league average pace (scaled to PA); Kelly, Avila, Ahmed, and Escobar at above average paces; plus Marte at an MVP pace. Locastro is still a useful piece as a PR in the right situations, and there’s still a possibility that Cron could bring some power off the bench.
The offense is the 5th best in the NL (better than every WC contender except the Mets), the defense is far and away the best in the NL (and MLB), and they have the best baserunning in the NL (tied with the Rangers for MLB lead). All put together, that’s quietly been the 3rd most valuable group of position players in the NL.
The pitching is a little dicier to figure out, because they were the 6th most valuable group in the NL, but there were just a large amount of shakeups in the rotation and bullpen. It’s yet to be determined exactly how much of Greinke’s value will be made up by Gallen, but nobody can deny that Leake is an upgrade from Clarke at the moment. Young is also still a total wildcard. The DFAs of Holland and Godley threw them into a closer by committee (although Bradley is showing signs of life) and allowed Ginkel to be brought up (it’s also yet to be seen how his stuff plays against Major Leaguers, but it certainly is nasty). But if either of Walker or Weaver is capable of coming back, either would be a better option than Scott.
Brewers
Braves