The Brewers and the Phillies won again, and the three teams in front of them lost as three games now separate the five teams vying for the second NL Wild Card slot. The tie can still occur with all five teams winning 90 games with the following finishes:
- Brewers 18-1
- Phillies 18-1
- Pirates 18-2
- Dodgers 16-3
- Cardinals 15-4
For this particular scenario to work, the Brewers would win two of their three games against the Pirates. The Dodgers can also sweep the Cardinals and still have this work. Note that this is the best case scenario, the five teams could also easily tie at any level down from this.
The Dodgers failed to move into a tie with St. Louis as Trevor Cahill and the Arizona bullpen did not issue a walk, and Los Angeles batters went down swinging eight times in a 3-2 loss. During thier 1-6 run, the Dodgers offense is posting a .212/.277/.296 slash line. That’s pretty good for a pitcher, but not for a playoff bound team. What must be galling to fans is that the Dodgers are in games. They are averaging seven plate appearances per game in close and late situations, going .194/.271/.306 in those PA. Three of their losses were by one run. The losing streak brought the Giants magic number down to 13. Arizona now stands just four games out of the wild card, and I’m tempted to include them in the above scenario, but every time I get excited about the Diamondbacks, they start losing again. I’ll give it another series.
The American League tie became a bit more difficult after Wednesday’s results. The teams that had to gain, the Rays and the Angels, both lost to the teams ahead of them in the same division, the Orioles and the Athletics. The five-way tie is still possible at 96 games, but the Angles can’t lose the rest of the way for that to happen:
- Angels 19-0
- Rays 19-1
- Orioles 16-4
- Yankees 16-4
- Athletics 14-6
Oakland took their third game in a row from the Angles Wednesday night, with A.J. Griffin turning in a gem. He threw eight shutout innings, working efficiently as he walked none and struck out six (I guess all the no-walk signs were lit in the greater Los Angeles area on Wedensday). In 11 starts covering 65 innings, Griffin walked 11 and struck out 53, helping him to a 1.94 ERA. Albert Pujols did reach 30 home runs for the 12th time in his career, but that wasn’t enough as the A’s won 4-1. Oakland is looking more and more like a team capable of winning it all.
Here are the results I’d like to see today to increase the chances of a massive tie:
- Tampa Bay defeats Baltimore
- LAnaheim beats Oakland
- New York loses to Boston
- Philadelphia defeats Houston
- Los Angeles triumphs over St. Louis
It wouldn’t hurt if Texas lost to Cleveland, as I’ll take a four-way tie between the two AL East leaders and the two AL West leaders. One thing helping the NL race is that Philadelphia plays Houston, and Milwaukee plays the Mets this weekend.