After five months of slow and steady, baseball is about to shift into fast and furious mode. It’s almost September, which means the annual all-out sprint to the postseason is about to begin.
Unless it’s already happened, and we missed it.
The oddsmakers at FanGraphs seem to think the playoff picture is all but set already.
Entering play on Thursday, FanGraphs had six teams in the American League with a better than 74 percent chance of making the playoffs, and only one other with even a 20 percent chance of getting in. The National League is even more clearly defined with five teams having at least a 90 percent chance of making it, another sitting at just below 75 percent, and the only other serious contender having just a 25.3 percent chance.
Every other NL team has playoff odds in the single digits, which wasn’t true as recently as Aug. 1, when the day started with 19 different teams having at least an 11 percent chance of making the playoffs and a 20th — the defending champion Texas Rangers — having a 9.4 percent chance.
The playoff field, it turns out, might have a lot more to do with what happened the past five weeks than what happens in the next five.
American League playoff odds
| Team | 3 months ago | All-Star Game | Deadline | 2 weeks ago | Today |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
22.6% |
52.4% |
43.5% |
42.9% |
39.1% |
|
|
33.4% |
16.4% |
13.4% |
7.5% |
4.0% |
|
|
59.5% |
82.1% |
82.3% |
89.2% |
87.7% |
|
|
62.0% |
32.8% |
47.0% |
55.5% |
75.1% |
|
|
12.4% |
7.5% |
2.8% |
0.4% |
1.0% |
|
|
51.0% |
58.3% |
58.2% |
61.9% |
90.3% |
|
|
62.8% |
56.5% |
48.9% |
51.4% |
12.6% |
|
|
19.7% |
11.9% |
14.4% |
3.6% |
0.5% |
There remain tight division races in the AL East and AL Central — and arguably the NL West — but those races are among teams that have a leg up in the wild card and don’t necessarily need a division title to play in October.
The New York Yankees (99.4 percent chance of making the playoffs), Baltimore Orioles (97.8 percent) and Cleveland Guardians (92.5 percent) are basically postseason locks in the American League, while the Houston Astros (90.3 percent) and Minnesota Twins (87.7 percent) are statistically safe bets. The Kansas City Royals currently hold the final wild card spot with a 75.1 percent chance of keeping it.
Elsewhere, the Boston Red Sox (39.1 percent) are the only other team truly in the running. The Seattle Mariners are down to 12.6 percent and the Tampa Bay Rays — who made a little bit of noise in July — are down to a 4 percent chance.
In the National League, the Los Angeles Dodgers (100 percent), Philadelphia Phillies (99.5 percent) and Milwaukee Brewers (99.3 percent) have all but clinched a spot in the postseason, while the red-hot-since-the-break San Diego Padres (95.1 percent) and Arizona Diamondbacks (92 percent) have catapulted into strong positions to join them.
The preseason favorite Atlanta Braves are decimated by injuries, but even they have a strong 74.6 percent chance of winning the final wild card spot. The only team meaningfully chasing the Braves are the New York Mets whose playoff odds are down to 25.5 percent after spiking at just over 50 percent in late July. No other NL team has playoff odds in the double digits with only the San Francisco Giants (7 percent) having better than a 3 percent chance.
National League playoff odds
| Team | 3 months ago | All-Star Game | Deadline | 2 weeks ago | Today |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
99.0% |
93.5% |
80.0% |
60.7% |
74.6% |
|
|
14.4% |
44.2% |
51.6% |
38.8% |
25.2% |
|
|
53.1% |
11.7% |
5.6% |
7.6% |
2.6% |
|
|
26.2% |
42.1% |
22.7% |
17.3% |
2.8% |
|
|
8.1% |
16.9% |
15.9% |
2.7% |
0.3% |
|
|
5.8% |
8.6% |
6.0% |
2.1% |
1.6% |
|
|
57.9% |
38.9% |
62.8% |
88.4% |
95.1% |
|
|
38.0% |
39.7% |
49.9% |
75.2% |
92.0% |
|
|
34.7% |
24.0% |
17.6% |
16.7% |
7.0% |
Such clarity really started at the All-Star break. Baseball’s best teams since the break are the Diamondbacks (23-8), Padres (22-7), Dodgers (20-11), Royals (19-11), Astros (18-12) and Brewers (18-11), and those six have shifted the balance of every nearly undecided playoff spot.
The Astros have thoroughly separated themselves from the Mariners in the AL West. Those two were within a game of one another at the break, but the Mariners have floundered for weeks and have a losing record even since the trade deadline despite making significant additions (the going-nowhere Oakland A’s have outplayed them in August).
The AL wild card race has long had one spot basically guaranteed (the second-place team in the East will undoubtedly be a wild card), but the Royals and Twins have taken control of the other two. They’re tied, 3 1/2 games ahead of the Red Sox and at least six games ahead of everyone else. It’s not an insurmountable lead, but here’s one Red Sox blog attempting to do the math on what it would take for the Red Sox to close that gap.
Twins are on a 90/91-win pace. To get to 92, they’re gonna need to go 25-11.
Suppose 5-5 against AZ/BAL/NYY, they’ll need to go 20-6 against the other teams.
They desperately need to rip off a 10-2 stretch or something in this upcoming set to make the math work. https://t.co/xnh14lOalA
— Chris Hatfield (@SPChrisHatfield) August 22, 2024
In the National League, the Brewers have distanced themselves from the rest of the Central. As of July 13 — the weekend before the All-Star Game — the Cardinals were within 3 1/2 games of first place and every team in the division had at least an 8 percent chance of making the playoffs. The Brewers are now the division’s only team above .500, and none of the others has even a 3 percent chance of playing in October.
In the NL West, the Giants have been better than most since the break (18-14), but they have not been able to keep pace with the charging Padres and Diamondbacks, each of whom might have caught the heavily favored Dodgers had the Dodgers not also been on a roll. One team is going to win the West, and the other two are going to be heavy favorites to advance as wild cards. FanGraphs has the Padres and Diamondbacks playoff odds on par with the Guardians, who have been one of the best teams in baseball with vibes that are off the charts.
With the Philllies in control of the NL East, the only other National League spot somewhat up for grabs is the final wild card, which is currently held by the scrambling Braves, who just added Austin Riley to an injured list that already included Spencer Strider, Ronald Acuna Jr. and Ozzie Albies. If the Mets can get hot — like they were in July — they might be able to close the gap and make a legitimate run at unseating the preseason favorites for a playoff spot.
The Red Sox, too, could perhaps get on a roll and unseat one of the favorites from AL Central to sneak into the postseason. It’s not that there’s nothing to play for in the next five weeks.
But when all is said and done, and the playoff field is set, we might find that the real sprint to October was finished before the calendar even flipped to September.
(Top photo: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)