Looking at the NL Wild Card Contenders as a "Division"

The tightly bunched race is just what MLB was hoping for, and the Diamondbacks are in the thick of it.

While driving around the valley yesterday afternoon listening to the radio, I heard Luke Lapinski, the co-host of the Wolf and Luke show on Arizona Sports, 98.7, make an interesting comment about the NL Wild Card. While marveling at how closely everything was bunched together, he said you can almost look at the six teams contending for the Wild Card as a DIVISION.  The presentation of data in this article is inspired by the comment.

Current Standings as of morning of August 23rd

Baseball Reference

With their win last night against the Rangers, the Diamondbacks moved into the third wild card position in the standings, sitting half a game ahead of the Reds and Giants. They are tied with the Cubs, who holds the second spot by less than a tenth of a percent (.520 vs. .5196), and a full game up on the Marlins. The Phillies hold a commanding, but not insurmountable 3.5-game lead.

The table above, info courtesy of Baseball Reference, also includes the Pythagorean, or expected won-loss based on the run differentials.  As you can see three of the four teams have a negative run differential, including Arizona, and the difference between expected and actual wins is a positive number for all but the Cubs. The higher the number in the "luck" column, the more fortune has smiled upon that team. 

Projections Going Forward

Readers of this website will be familiar with our chosen method of taking snapshots in time of the projected standings. We prefer to use the average of three separate projection systems, that come from Baseball Reference, Fangraphs, and Baseball Prospectus.  The methodology for each differs somewhat but essentially it's based on their own projection systems and then a varying number of simulations run for each.  The table you see below is the composite average from the three systems. 

Jack Sommers

Table Notes

The NL East and West divisions are all but sealed with the Braves and Dodgers each having commanding leads of 12.5 and 11.5 games respectively. Thus the division chances for the Wild Card hopefuls in those divisions is near or at zero. The NL Central however is still up for grabs. The Cubs are only 3.5 games back of the Milwaukee Brewers and it's conceivable they could overtake the Brewers and it would be Milwaukee who fell into this table. 

Despite being a game back of the D-backs, the Giants still project out slightly better than Arizona. This is mostly due to Baseball Prospectus projections for the D-backs being considerably lower than the other two sites. That's been a consistent theme all year. When the D-backs were 16 games over .500 many were quick to dismiss the BP projections as too much of an outlier. In fact they may have been ahead of the curve. Below is the current breakdown between the three systems for the D-backs

Jack Sommers

Tiebreakers and Remaining Schedule

The Diamondbacks control some but not all of their own fate.  They have 13 head-to-head games left against some of these contenders, including four against the Reds at Chase field starting tomorrow. They have seven against the Cubs in early and mid September, with four in Wrigley Field then three at Chase in a 10-day span. They also have two against the Giants in late September at Chase.  Winning a sizable majority of these games would go a long way to increasing the D-backs chances of course.

But the tie breaker of head-to-head records looms large. The D-backs were swept in Cincinnati earlier this year, and so have an 0-3 record versus the Reds. Only a series sweep would give them the advantage over the Reds in the event of tie at the end of the year, and even winning the series 3-1 would still give the Reds the tie breaker advantage. 

The Marlins took the season series from the D-backs 4-2, and the Phillies also beat the D-backs 4-3, so if either of those two teams ended up in a tie with the D-backs for the final Wild Card spot, Arizona would lose out there as well.  The bad tiebreaker news doesn't stop there, as the D-backs are 5-6 against the Giants this year. The would need to sweep those two games to take the season series. 

Summary

While the current picture looks like 84 wins gets the number six seed for the final wild card spot, the target for the D-backs must be at least 85 or 86 wins to make sure they are not subject to the tiebreaker. Michael McDermott previously laid out the path ahead to get to that win total.

Ideally they'd be able to get to 87 or 88 wins and chase down the Phillies for the first wild card spot, number four seed overall. Then they would host the first three-game Wild Card series at Chase against the No. 5 seed. Otherwise they will be on the road either against the National League Central winner if they're the No. 6 seed, or perhaps Philadelphia or Chicago if they are the five seed. That may be a lot to ask, but it's a worthy goal. 

The bottom line is they have to continue to play well and treat every game as a must win game. Things can shift very quickly as we've seen. The D-backs went from going 7-25 over a 32 game stretch to fall out of a playoff spot, to win nine of their last 11 and jump right back in it.  Any one of these teams could get hot or cold for 10 days, and then totally reverse course the next ten. The above tables are just a snapshot in time, not a reliable prediction. It's going to be a fun wild ride that will likely go down to the final days of the season. Buckle up!