Sunday was the final day of the regular season in Major League Baseball. This race has been thrilling to watch these last couple of weeks with the two best teams in baseball duking it out for the chance to avoid a one-game playoff. The Giants entered the day in the driver's seat, and leaned on their pitching to keep the wins coming.
Alex Wood tossed six shutout innings while the bullpen followed up with three more, allowing San Francisco to beat Arizona by a slim 1-0 margin. They were trailing the Padres 9-6 heading into the bottom of the eighth, but they hit four homers in that inning to take the lead and ultimately win. The Giants still hold a two-game lead with a magic number of three to clinch. With a win over the Arizona Diamondbacks on Sept. 14, the Los Angeles Dodgers followed suit by clinching a postseason berth for a ninth straight season. The National League field is almost complete, with the NL East race standing as the only unfinished battle. The Dodgers, Brewers, Giants and Cardinals have snagged four playoff spots, while Atlanta's magic number to clinch the NL East is now at one.
As for the American League, the Rays and White Sox have clinched their respective divisions in the American League, and the Astros enter Thursday night with a magic number of one. This is the little division that could, one that seems as though it could be clinched early in the week but was still alive heading into Wednesday. Houston just needed a win or a Seattle loss to finish this one up.
Mlb Standings National League Wild Card The Rays had absolutely no trouble taking down the Astros, winning a 7-0 blowout with four pitchers combining to give up just three hits all night. Meanwhile, Seattle refuses to quit and is just beating up on the Athletics. They finished their second straight sweep over Oakland on Wednesday, winning 4-2 with all of the runs being scored in the final four innings.
St. Louis will almost certainly be the road team for the wild card game, after winning 16 straight games through Sunday. The Cardinals lead the Phillies and Reds by six games for the second wild card spot, with only six games to play. The MLB Standings has a section called the MLB Wild Card Standings. When the playoffs begin, the three division winners from both the American League and National League are given automatic spots into the postseason.
The MLB decided to award playoff opportunities to other teams, starting with one in 1994 and then two in 2012. Each season, two clubs from both the AL and NL will meet in a one-game playoff and the loser is eliminated while the winner advances to face the top seed in the Divisional Series. There could conceivably be a three-way tie for two wild card spots, which would trigger a scenario where teams could choose to be Club A, B or C to determine matchups.
(Club A and B are guaranteed two games, though A gets to play the first one at home. Club C only gets one chance to win into the wild card but gets to play that game at home). Throughout this process, the question of home field advantage is always at the forefront of everyone's mind. All series are made up of odd numbered games and the team with the better regular season record will start the series with two home games before moving to the opponent's ground. If a game five is required, the teams will return to the first team's ground giving them a greater number of games at home and thus the advantage. The Red Sox are in a tight race with the Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees for the two wild card spots as all three teams fight to make the Major League Baseball postseason.
Boston was on the outside looking in last week slightly due to percentage points, but the script has flipped after it picked up its fifth straight win. The Sox aren't operating with a lot of room for error as they hold a tenuous one-game lead for the final AL wild card spot coming into Thursday's action. After dropping what almost felt like it should've been a gimme Tuesday against the Orioles, the Sox got back on track in Baltimore Wednesday night with a 6-0 win behind J.D.
New York moved one game ahead of Boston atop the AL wild-card standings with six games remaining for both teams. The Red Sox hold a one-game lead over Toronto for the final AL playoff spot. The Yankees needed two wins to secure a playoff spot for a fifth straight year and home-field advantage in the wild-card game. In a three-way tie, the team with the best regular-season head-to-head record against each of the others will get to host the first tiebreaker game, with the winner advancing automatically to the wild card. The loser would then face the third team the next day, with the winner of that matchup earning the second wild-card spot. The Phillies have stayed alive by winning seven of their past 10 games.
They have beat up on some of the worst teams in baseball during that stretch, and that could continue this weekend as they will host a four-game series against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Meanwhile, the likelihood of a four-way tie for two spots is much less likely at this point and also much more straightforward. In this case, there would simply be a standard playoff (e.g., Club A vs. Club B, Club C vs. Club D) with the two winners playing in the one-game wild card.
Again, Boston could get an advantage in a tie situation because of its head-to-head success with each team. Right now, the New York Yankees and Red Sox hold the two wild card spots in the American League. But literally everything about those standings can change in the next few games with four teams — the Yankees, Red Sox, Toronto Blue Jays and Seattle Mariners — all sitting within two games of each other. Heading into the final game of their series in Toronto Thursday, the Yankees have a one-game lead atop the wild-card standings. The Red Sox are the last team in the latest playoff picture, barely clinging onto the second wild-card spot.
Seattle is a half-game behind Boston, and Toronto is a full game behind the Red Sox. The remaining gate receipts are divided between the two leagues, the Major League Baseball Commission and the teams involved. This division of the earnings was put in place in an effort to discourage players from throwing an early game in order to extend the series.
The Yankees, Red Sox, Blue Jays and Mariners came into the final day of the 2021 MLB regular season vying for the two spots with multiple tiebreaker scenarios very much in play. But the Yankees and Red Sox ultimately secured the AL wild-card spots with a walk-off win over the Rays and a come-from-behind win over the Nationals, respectively, eliminating the Blue Jays and Mariners. The second-place team in the NL West will have the second-best record in the National League, and likely the majors, but will have to host the wild card game to even get into postseason series play.
This is the part where fans of teams in playoff spots — or those just outside — really start to get out the calculators. The magic number is the combination of a team's wins and/or losses by its closest competitor needed to clinch a playoff spot. If the Sox ended up in a three-way tie for the second wild card spot, however, things get more complex. Being Club A or B would mean having to win two games to advance while Club C, despite having to go on the road, only has to play and win once.
With a record away from Fenway Park, Boston might be tempted to take those odds. Assuming the Red Sox are one of those teams, they would have the first choice of whether to be Club A, B or C as they hold head-to-head tiebreakers over all the other teams. So Boston could be guaranteed two chances to get into the wild card and would host the first game at Fenway Park if they chose to be A.
All they'd have to do is win once and get in in that case. If they lost, they could go on the road to face Club C with a shot to win into the wild card game. However, ESPN notes there's still a solid chance of a two-team tie for the second wild card spot, which would trigger a Game 163 to see who gets to play in the actual wild card game. The American League wild-card race couldn't be any tighter with four games left in the 2021 MLB regular season.
Four teams are separated by just two games as they fight for the AL's final two postseason berths. On the road to the World Series, Major League Baseball has devised a playoff system which insures that you can combine your love of summer with all the joy of doing your taxes. What started as a simple series of baseball games to decide whether the champions of the National League or the champions of the American League were the overall best team in the country. In fact, prior to 1904, each league simply sent the team with the best record, without any sort of playoff to earn that spot.
If the Yankees beat the Rays on Sunday, they are guaranteed one of the two wild-card positions. If a Yankees victory is combined with a Red Sox loss at Washington, the Yankees will play the winner of the second wild card at Yankee Stadium on Tuesday night. If the Yankees and the Red Sox both win on Sunday, Boston will host the Yankees in the wild-card game by dint of its 10-9 regular-season advantage over its rival. Wins by the Yankees and the Red Sox would give both teams wild-card spots in the playoffs.
A loss by either team, or both, could extend the regular season. The Reds looked like the favorite for that second spot about a month ago, but they have lost 16 of 23 games since Aug. 28. That stretch included series losses to also-ran teams such as the Miami Marlins, Detroit Tigers, Chicago Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates.
They will face another sub-.500 team in the Washington Nationals this weekend. Of course, Cincy dropped the first game of that four-game series on Thursday, 3-2. Update, Saturday AM — The Phillies picked up a half game on the Braves since Friday and have two games against the Pirates this weekend. The next series against the Braves will likely decide the division and we could see the two teams tied or Phillies ahead by the end of the weekend.
Francisco Lindor homered in the first for New York (73-82), who led the NL East for 114 days but are assured of a sub-.500 season after losing for the 13th time in 16 games. Carrasco (1-4) surrendered five runs on seven hits and four walks while striking out three over four innings. If you're a baseball fan, you've probably heard the phrase "magic number." The term is used to explain how close a team is to winning its division or clinching a spot in the postseason. The Toronto Blue Jays will be among the teams allowing fans at games, but that's where normalcy ends for them. They will be playing home games at their spring training facility in Dunedin, Florida with limited-capacity crowds in attendance, to start the season.
They're hopeful they'll be allowed to return to Toronto sometime this summer. Four teams will advance from division play to the league championship series. Following division play, the American League Championship Series will begin on Friday, Oct. 15, and the National League Championship Series will begin on Saturday, Oct. 16. These series are best of seven and will determine who is competing for the 2021 World Series title. Game 1 of the World Series is scheduled for Tuesday, Oct. 26.
Brandon Lowe hit three homers and knocked in seven runs as Tampa Bay reached 100 regular-season wins for the first time in franchise history. The Rays established themselves as the elite team in the league as the rest of the A.L. The Detroit Tigers have the young pitching and the right manager to at least be competitive. But it's going to take a very aggressive offseason for this team to have a shot at the MLB playoffs. Detroit upgraded at catcher with Tucker Barnhart and that could be just the start. Add Carlos Correa and a front-line starter via free agency into the mix, along with top prospect Spencer Torkelson, October baseball might be possible.
Dodgers starter Walker Buehler struck out 11 Brewers hitters in five innings. He allowed three hits, one earned run and one walk on 79 pitches. The Brewers clinched the NL Central on Sunday, making the playoffs for the fourth straight year, a first in franchise history. Milwaukee is locked into the No. 2 seed in the NL, and will host the NL East winner in the first two games of the NLDS. This is actually a fairly simple scenario, in which a four-team bracket is created to find the final two playoff teams. Home field would be determined by the combined winning percentage against the other three teams.
Meanwhile, the Braves will continue their road trip out west, where they have won four of their past five games. They will battle the struggling San Diego Padres for three games this weekend. Well, three and a half, really; the teams will finish a previously suspended game on Friday, beginning in the bottom of the fifth inning.
The Wild Card Standings only show 12 teams from each league as the division winners are omitted, since they receive the automatic spots. Similar to the MLB standings, the columns shown are Win, Loss, Percent and GB . The Home and Away records, and Streak feature is not included in the MLB WC Standings. Franco, 20, doubled in his first at-bat to push his streak to 41 consecutive games reaching base. He is two games from tying Frank Robinson's 43-game streak from 1956, the longest ever by a player under 21.
The American League East champion Rays tied the franchise record for most wins in a season set in 2008 and are 38 games over .500 for the first time ever. The MLB 2021 regular season has entered its final day, and several postseason spots are on the line. After Wednesday's loss to Boston, the Mets dropped to 7 1/2 games behind the first-place Braves, pending the result of Atlanta-Arizona.
The Mets can be eliminated from postseason contention as soon as Friday, when they begin a three-game series in Milwaukee. The other ALDS series will be between the Tampa Bay Rays and the winner of the Red Sox-Yankees wild card game. And as Boston stumbled throughout July and into August, the competition in the AL East just kept getting better.
The Rays have gone 19-8 since the Red Sox took that 4.5 game lead in the division, and now sit four games ahead of the Red Sox. Those 19 wins include a three-game sweep over Boston in St. Pete, which played a big part in Tampa Bay's 8.5 game swing over the last month-plus. But Toronto and Seattle are still alive, and the wildest possibility is a four-way tie. For that to happen, the Yankees and the Red Sox need to lose, and the Blue Jays and the Mariners need to win. Then there would be two tiebreaker games on Monday, with the four teams choosing or receiving one of four designations to determine who plays whom, and where.
Boone has uttered that sentence in some form several times this season, and on some notable occasions the team responded well. But Saturday's loss, combined with victories by Boston, Toronto and Seattle, left the suddenly stumbling Yankees in danger of needing to play an extra game just to win a wild-card berth. Only a few days ago, one had already seemed in their grasp.
