How Many Wins Captures the 3rd NL Wild Card? (2024)
The National League Wild Card race continues to be a relatively tightly bunched affair. That said, there has also been some separation taking place over the last couple of weeks as the San Diego Padres and St. Louis Cardinals have gotten hot.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Giants edged ahead of the Arizona Diamondbacks Friday night and the New York Mets moved into a virtual tie with Arizona. Here is what the standings look like through the games of July 5th.
It's impossible to accurately project which teams will stay hot and which will collapse. The purpose of this article is not to project the Wild Card winners, but to figure out what the "magic number" of wins is likely to be to capture that third Wild Card Spot. So as not to bury the lead too deep in the article, our projection is it will take a minimum of 84 Wins to secure a Postseason berth.
From the Diamondbacks' perspective, with their 43-45 record, that means they'd need to go 41-33 the rest of the way to capture the 3rd Wild Card spot again. That coincidentally is the same win total they got in with last year.
So how did we arrive at that projection?
The first and simplest way to look at this would be to just extrapolate the Cardinals' .529 W% to 162 games. Doing so comes out to 85.6 Wins. As the D-backs would need to win at least one more game than the Cardinals to get in, then the target becomes 86 games using this method.
A better way to view this however is via the projection websites, including Baseball Reference, Fangraphs, and Baseball Prospectus' "Pecota" projections. Using the averages of those three sites projected standings I created the following table. The win total is the focus here, more than the team.
As teams can't win partial games in real life, we need to round off of course. Using this table we can then say it will take 88-89 wins to capture the first Wild Card spot, 86-87 for the second, and 83-84 for the third. None of the projection systems see the third Wild Card winner, whoever it is, achieving 86 wins.
The lowest range of win total total needed to get in is 82. That projection comes from Baseball Reference which uses run differential over a team's last 100 games as the foundation for their calculations. The Reds have a +20 run differential this season. It's notable the Reds have the only positive run differential of any team below the Padres in the first standings table above.
In other words the Baseball Reference projections don't think any of the teams below the Padres are likely to win more than one game above a .500 record. However when we take the average of the three systems we arrive at 83.4 Wins.
We could have taken the lower number, 83, however once we consider tie-breakers, which are head to head records and then divisional records, we decided to err on the high side of the decimal point, thus 84 wins.
One last table. This shows what the Diamondbacks remaining win-loss would need to be to get to each win total. The extreme ends of this table are in grey to represent the extremely low odds that it takes as high as 88 or as low as 81 to get in.
Going eight game over .500 the rest of the way would be much better than the projection systems think the Diamondbacks will achieve. The range of the projections is now between 80-82 wins, or about .500 the rest of the way. But beating the projections by a handful of games is certainly well within the error bars in these projections.
It's notable that the highest peak over .500 the Diamondbacks reached last year at any point was 16 games. While it's always possible they could go on another such run, with the current state of their starting pitching injuries, that doesn't seem likely.
At some point the Diamondbacks are going to have to go on a decent run and get to 6 games or more over. 500 to get into the Postseason. They're highly unlike to squeak in with a .500 record or just a couple of games above.
Using this table we can then say it will take 88-89 wins to capture the first Wild Card spot, 86-87 for the second, and 83-84 for the third. None of the projection systems see the third Wild Card winner, whoever it is, achieving 86 wins. The lowest range of win total total needed to get in is 82.
There are two wild card series each, in the American League (AL) and National League (NL). The lowest-seeded division winner and three wild card teams in each league play in a best-of-three series after the end of the regular season.
In the new Wild Card Series, the top two division winners in each league receive a bye to the Division Series, while the lowest-seeded division winner and three wild card teams will play in this round.
There are three wild card teams in the NL and the teams in the AL. Each wild card team with the lowest seed faces the division winner with the lowest record. The format looks like this, with playoff positioning determined by the latest MLB standings. Each AL and NL Wild Card series is a best-of-three set.
When did the Wild Card Series become a 3 game series? The significant change occurred in 2022, when MLB introduced a third wild card team in each league.
Starting in 2022, the playoffs for each league—American and National—consist of two best-of-three Wild Card Series contested by the lowest-seeded division winner and the three wild card teams, two best-of-five Division Series (LDS) featuring the wild-card winners and the two highest-seeded division winners, and finally ...
The organizations that win the Wild Card are those with the best win-loss record overall but failed to win their division title. The three wild cards of each conference can belong to the same division as long as they finish above the rest of the teams that were not champions of their respective sectors.
The new 12-team MLB playoff format was introduced ahead of the 2022 season. In each league, three division winners make the playoffs, as do three Wild Card teams. The top two seeds in each league receive a bye into the Division Series, while the remaining four teams play a best-of-three Wild Card Series.
72. Each team plays 72 games against their division opponents. If they win every one of those and all of the division opponents lose every game, but split every series against the other division opponents the team winning 72 would win the division and make the playoffs.
There are 6 teams that have won the Super Bowl who entered the playoffs as a Wild Card Team. They are: the Oakland Raiders in 1980, Denver Broncos in 1997, Baltimore Ravens in 2000, Pittsburgh Steelers in 2005, New York Giants in 2007 and Green Bay Packers in 2010.
In 1985, the format changed to best-of-seven. The NLCS and ALCS, since the expansion to seven games, are always played in a 2–3–2 format: games 1, 2, 6, and 7 are played in the stadium of the team that has home field advantage, and games 3, 4, and 5 are played in the stadium of the team that does not.
Each Wild Card Series game will be played in the home park of the team with the higher seed (so, the Nos. 3 and 4 seeds will have the hosting duties). The games will be scheduled to take place in a three-day window so that the division winners with byes are not forced to wait around longer than is beneficial.
The two division winners with the best record in each league receive a bye through the first round of the playoffs under the new format. The remaining division winner, as well as the three wild card winners, compete in best-of-three series to determine who makes it to the Division Series round.
The NLCS is a best-of-seven series, so the Phillies would host the first two games at Citizens Bank Park, beginning Monday at 8:07 p.m. on TBS. Games 3 through 5 would be played at Chase Field in Phoenix, and the series would return to Philly for Games 6 and 7, if they're necessary.
In 1985, the format changed to best-of-seven. The NLCS and ALCS, since the expansion to seven games, are always played in a 2–3–2 format: games 1, 2, 6, and 7 are played in the stadium of the team that has home field advantage, and games 3, 4, and 5 are played in the stadium of the team that does not.
Address: 2865 Kasha Unions, West Corrinne, AK 05708-1071
Phone: +3512198379449
Job: Design Planner
Hobby: Graffiti, Foreign language learning, Gambling, Metalworking, Rowing, Sculling, Sewing
Introduction: My name is Dong Thiel, I am a brainy, happy, tasty, lively, splendid, talented, cooperative person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
We notice you're using an ad blocker
Without advertising income, we can't keep making this site awesome for you.
