Sports

Does anybody actually want to win the NL Wild Card?


San Diego's Nick Martinez felt the heat in relief during the Padres' 5-0 loss to Arizona on Monday.

San Diego’s Nick Martinez felt the heat of relief in Padres’ 5-0 loss to Arizona on Monday.
Picture: beautiful pictures

MLB post-production started in just over a month. In the National League, four out of six spots have been secured. The Dodgers will easily win the NL West, the Cardinals will win the NL Central, and the Mets and Braves will battle for the NL East title, ultimately pushing one of them into NL’s four-seeded pool. That leaves five and six seeds to take. Two places and three teams are vying for a playoff spot: the San Diego Padres, the Milwaukee Brewers and the Philadelphia Phillies.

Sure, teams like the San Francisco Giants and Arizona Diamondbacks are technically still in the race, but let’s be honest, no one expected them to make a post-season run. MAYBE it happened? Sure. Then again, my ex-girlfriend maybe decided to take me home. I see both of these cases as unlikely.

To prevent some cosmic interference from the powers, the last two NL Wild Card slots will be awarded to certain combinations of Phillies, Brewers and Padres. The Brewers are looking for their fifth straight stop after the season. The Phillies haven’t made it to the knockouts since 2011, and the Padres haven’t made it to the knockouts in a normal, COVID-free season shortened since 2006. You’d think each of these teams would died for the chance to compete in the World Series, but based on the past few days, each team seemed happy to let the other two take their place.

Over the weekend, the Padres was on his way to a trilogy of games with the Dodgers. Padres lost in that streak. There’s no shame in dropping two-thirds of it to Los Angeles on the way. No shame at all. However, where the shame starts to happen is their offense. In their last three games (two @LAD, one against ARI), the Padres have scored a total of five runs.

I understand it’s difficult to score six innings for Julio Urías, then Blake Treinen, but there’s no point in scoring just three games earned in 6.1 innings against the likes of Heath Hembree, Phil Bickford , Chris Martin, Craig Kimbrel, and Ryan Pepiot. They trapped 11 runners in that game! Padres leads the fourth table with a walking double. How did the match end? Strikeout, Strikeout, pop fly. I know it’s the Padres’ bottom, but you can’t even move them. These are must-win games at this point in the season, and no one seems to be able to do any damage but Machado and Soto!

Fortunately, the Padres were rid of the Dodgers following that game. Their first game of their home series against Arizona featured Ryne Nelson on the mound for the D-Backs. This was his first-ever Major League start. He pitched seven shutout innings, allowing only four hits. This guy had a 5.43 ERA in Triple-A This year comes with 5.51 FIP and a declining strike rate over the past three seasons in the underage. His fast ball is about 95 mph – nothing overwhelming. Padres can’t touch him. Sure, Nelson let a few balloons fly for comfort, but he lacked crates and forced mostly weak to moderate contact. No harm, no foul. I know facing a new pitcher can be tough as there aren’t many scouting reports to come up with, but this guy isn’t supposed to dominate his early career start as much as he did. do, especially against a supposedly dangerous crime like San Diego.

Phillies is no better. They just finished a series with San Francisco. The Giants have lost seven games in a row and 11 of their 13 games against Philadelphia. Did the Phillies take advantage? No. They surrendered 13 times to the Giants – tied for the second most runs the Giants have scored for the whole year. This Giants has been hanging around all season and is finally starting to see their playoff hopes fade away, but the Phillies just need to give them a reason to keep going, huh? San Francisco has only beaten two opponents in a three-game set or so since early June. Only two!

The Phillies may have the edge over the Brewers on the leaderboard right now, but now’s not the time to lose to the lowly giants! The Giants gave catcher Andrew Knapp, who currently has an OPS of .393 in 2021, seven disc appearances in the series. Knapp reached the base or drove off, in four of them. That was arguably Knapp’s hottest streak of the whole season! You can’t let guys like that beat you.

Then there are the Brewers, who have actually won two of their last three games. So great! You know what’s not great though? Down 3/4 to Arizona over the weekend and scored only twice in those losses. I’ll credit the Brewers for scoring eight runs in their only win, but they needed 10 runs to do so. Imagine you needed more innings to avoid being swept by the Diamondbacks. I know they’ve been hot, but the Brewers are clearly the better team and are in must-win territory. They’re outside the playoff bubble, looking right now. And scoring a total of ten runs over a four-game period against Arizona won’t help.

Good news for the Brewers, though, they have seven straight games against Colorado, San Francisco and Cincinnati to find out everything before starting the eight-game round with the Cardinals, Yankees and Mets. If the Brewers are to have any hope of overcoming Philadelphia or San Diego, they will need to win at least five of their next seven games.

At this rate, any team that can play even 500 balls until the end of the season will be able to get a spot in the post-season period. Given that the defending World Series champion, the Atlanta Braves, had the worst record of any playoff team last year, it’s not unreasonable to say that any team that makes it to the playoffs has a good record. in winning the World Series Championship Cup at the end of the game. five. That said, if the Phillies, Brewers or Padres want that chance, they better start taking action. Now is not the time for a definite seasonal drop.



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