After the trade deadline, we gave a rundown of where the playoff races stood.
A lot has changed.
In the NL Central, AL Central, and AL West, things haven’t moved too much. We described the Central races as “over.” They are still over. In the AL West, we wrote, “The A’s aren’t gone yet, but the Astros have gained enough that Oakland will be in the wild card section of this.” That holds up.
Elsewhere, though…
First off, we listed both the Mariners and the Cardinals in a category labeled “The Almost-Certainly-Nots.” The pair were around the race—Seattle more so than St. Louis—but their playoff probabilities were each south of 1-in-40. Entering today, they’re at 3.1% and 5.1% respectively, which is still small, but is nearly a full order of magnitude bigger for the Mariners than it was and is about to rise further for the Cardinals as they’ve just taken the doubleheader opener from the Reds.
Secondly, in our “NL West/NL Wild Card” section, we wrote: “The Padres…are probably safe but do have the Reds in the rearview…It could happen but either someone would have to really mess up or someone else would have to really overperform.” Now, the Padres are clinging to a tie with Cincinnati, with the situation having been much worse just a few days ago, but still rather bad: The Cardinals and Phillies are two and a half back, each, and San Diego faces the hardest schedule in baseball the rest of the way.
Then, of course, there’s the NL East, where we wrote: “The Mets should hold these guys off, but they’re only up three or four games, Jacob deGrom is hurt, and both Philly and Atlanta have enough pieces to keep them interesting. No real wild card shot for any of them.” Whoops! Wrong again! To be fair, the wild card chances out of this division are slim. But they do exist, and the Mets have not held either Philly or Atlanta off. Woof.
Finally, the AL East, and the AL Wild Card.
We didn’t even list the Yankees in the AL East writeup, though now I suppose that doesn’t matter, as the Rays are on the brink of putting it all to bed anyway. Really, as I look through this, all that’s changed is the Rays. The Yankees made their run, but it likely wasn’t enough. The Red Sox faltered, but a lot of that was their 1-8 combined mark against the two teams now ahead of them. The Rays just kicked a ton of ass, and now, here we are.
Something useful to look at as we take stock of what happened (remember, in July we were writing things assessing the probability the NL playoff field was locked in) is the list of August records from the nineteen not-entirely-dead teams we identified entering the month:
Tampa Bay: 21-6
Los Angeles: 21-6
New York (AL): 21-8
Atlanta: 18-8
San Francisco: 19-9
Milwaukee: 19-9
Philadelphia: 17-9
St. Louis: 15-11
Chicago (AL): 16-12
Cincinnati: 16-12
Oakland: 14-12
Seattle: 15-13
Toronto: 16-14
Houston: 14-13
Cleveland: 14-14
Anaheim: 14-15
Boston: 12-16
San Diego: 11-15
New York (NL): 9-19
To put greater meaning on those numbers, that’s a 126-win pace from both the Rays and the Dodgers. That’s a 117-win pace from the Yankees. That’s a 112-win pace from Atlanta and a 110-win pace from San Francisco and Milwaukee. That’s a 106-win pace from Philadelphia, who at one point got swept by the Diamondbacks last month. And at the other end, that’s a 69-win pace from both the Red Sox and the Padres, and that’s a 52-win pace from the Mets.
I don’t know how those marks compare to the spread you’d get in an average month. It’s possible teams are doing this all the time and we just don’t notice it because the leverage isn’t so high. But that’s seven teams playing at a ridiculous pace. The White Sox look bad on that list and they kept winning at the same rate they’ve won at all year. Ditto the Blue Jays.
The biggest takeaway, then? We have some great playoff races this year. And so far, a lot of teams have risen to the occasion.
