On Sunday the Cincinnati Reds picked up a 1-0 win to sweep the Chicago Cubs. About an hour earlier the Washington Nationals topped the New York Mets. The result of those two games left both the Reds and the Mets at 80-76. That places them in a tie for the 3rd wild card spot and one game up on the Arizona Diamondbacks. According to Fangraphs playoff odds, with that combination of results, the Reds playoff odds went from 21% to 42%.
Cincinnati owns the tiebreaker over the New York Mets if those two teams are tied at the end of the year. That means that at least as things stand right now, the Reds have a one game lead over the Mets for all intents and purposes because unless a third team enters the fray, the Mets must actually finish ahead of the Reds to get into the playoffs. Fangraphs, though, still has New York with a higher chance of reaching the playoffs than Cincinnati.
The reason for that is that they project the Reds to go 3-3 the rest of the way and finished 83-79, but they project the Mets to go 4-2 and finish at 84-78.
Cincinnati will begin a 3-game home series on Tuesday against the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Pirates are 67-89 on the season. After that, the Reds finish the regular season against the Milwaukee Brewers. They hold the best record in all of Major League Baseball.
New York heads to Chicago to take on the Cubs on Tuesday to begin a 3-game series. Chicago is 88-68 and is currently holding the top wild card spot, but at least at the start of the series is still playing for the division and if not that for the top wild card spot over the San Diego Padres. The Mets will finish up their season against Miami as they take on the Marlins on the road to finish up the season. Miami is 76-80, but since the start of June they are 53-47 and playing better than they did early on in the year.
New York plays Miami six times between March 31st and April 9th. The Mets won four of those games. The two teams didn’t play again until the end of August when Miami won 3-of-4.
Things are pretty simple for Cincinnati. Win every game and no one can prevent you from making the playoffs. Is that likely? No. Not it’s not. Cincinnati has won five games in a row as things stand right now. Winning out would push their winning streak to 11 games. The longest winning streak this team has had all year is five games, which they’ve now accomplished four times.
If the Reds can’t win out, then they need to also pay attention to what Arizona is doing as well as the Mets. The Diamondbacks have a tough schedule ahead of them. On Tuesday they begin a 3-game series in Arizona against the Los Angeles Dodgers. They will wrap up their season with three games on the road against San Diego. The Dodgers are sitting at 88-68 on the year, while the Padres are 85-71. This season the Diamondbacks are 5-5 against both Los Angeles and San Diego. It’s worth noting though that they’ve only played the Dodgers three times since mid-May and they won that series two games to one.
Cincinnati has the tiebreaker against the Diamondbacks if those two teams wind up tied at the end of the season.
With the Reds having won the season series over both clubs, they hold the tiebreaker if the three teams are all tied at the end of the season.
The final week is certainly looking like it could be fun. Or stressful. Or soul crushing. But maybe it can be exuberating. We’re all about to find out together.
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