Mlb National League Wild Card Standings 2021

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.

St. Louis began last week a game behind both the Reds and Padres in the wild card race, but the Cardinals just keep winning. What has long looked like a race for just one wild card spot in the National League is officially just that, with both the San Fransisco Giants and L.A. All that's left for those two powerhouse clubs is to fight for the right to a playoff series, as opposed to the wild card game. Right now, the San Diego Padres are the closest team knocking on the post-season door, just one win behind the St. Louis Cardinals for that second wild card spot.

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.

The AL wild card, nonetheless, persists as a cause of the complication. The Yankees on Sunday night completed a three-game sweep of the Red Sox in Fenway and now have a one-game lead over Boston for the top spot and right to host the AL Wild Card Game. The Sox are just one game ahead of the Blue Jays for the second and final spot. While the Oakland A's are in Seattle to meet the Mariners, neither of those teams is still out of it.

The Cardinals are close to clinching the second NL wild-card spot in the National League as their 16-game winning streak has their prediction number down to one. Officially we have our first five postseason teams, as the White Sox, Giants, Dodgers, Brewers, and Rays form half of the bracket. The Houston Astros will probably be the next division winner to join them. Houston's qualification number sits at two victories to clinch the American League West. 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.

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. 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. The wild card teams in each league face off in winner-take-all games for the chance to advance to the LDS against the top seeded division winner.

Meanwhile, the remaining two division winners match up against one another in each league. 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 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. Boston is now in sole possession of the second wild-card spot and leads both Seattle and Toronto by one game.

Put simply, if the Red Sox win their final two regular season games against the Nationals, they will play in the AL Wild Card Game on Tuesday. If the Sox win both games and the Yankees lose at least once to the Rays, the Wild Card Game will be played at Fenway Park (Boston holds the home-field tiebreaker with the Yankees). A Red Sox win on Saturday would guarantee that they play past Sunday in some form, whether in tiebreaker or the Wild Card Game.

Another division that draws intrigue in the American League baseball standings is the American League Central. In addition to the six division winners, the top remaining two teams per league qualify as wild cards for a total of 10 playoff teams. The Red Sox are also on a five-game winning streak, and they've taken sole possession of the top spot ahead of the Blue Jays, who only won two-of-three in their latest series.

The Yankees had a rough weekend, losing two blowouts to Cleveland, and they've fallen into a tie with Oakland in the loss column. With just one week of playing left, half a dozen of teams are still in contention to secure their spot. Whether it's a division crown and a straight ride to the division series or one of two wild-card spots to face single-game elimination play.

However, not all of the teams in contention will pass on the chance to have home-field advantage. The 1 vs. 4 and 2 vs. 3 teams in each league face each other in a five-game divisional series, whoever gets three wins first, wins. The winners of the divisional series' move on to the championship series in each league, where they play a seven-game series. First to four wins in that series moves on to the World Series for another seven-game series. Today, the White Sox battle it out in a competitive division that features other contenders such as the Minnesota Twins and Cleveland Indians.

All three of those AL Central teams have gone onto the playoffs in the recent history of the league, with Cleveland getting to multiple World Series. Both the Yankees and Red Sox look to use the regular season standings as a springboard into the postseason. And both teams have gone from being atop the division standings to winning championships in October. But the Tampa Bay Rays have been a consistent contender and a thorn in the side of New York and Boston for many years. 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. 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 wild-card race is close apart and will come down to the final week - or even the last weekend - of the regular season, which ends Sunday, Oct. 3. Or we could have some bonus baseball on Oct. 4 if there are tiebreakers to be played heading into the postseason.

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. The loser would then face the third team the next day, with the winner of that matchup earning the second wild-card spot. 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. The afternoon started with the prospect of a four-way tie for the two American League wild-card spots—and an unprecedented collection of convoluted tiebreaker scenarios.

All of that was erased when Boston and New York won their games to secure their places in Tuesday's do-or-die showdown at Fenway Park on Tuesday night. The victor will take on the Tampa Bay Rays in the division series, which begins Thursday. The Major League Baseball standings are a vital barometer to a team's success over the course of the MLB season.

In order to make the playoffs, teams have to finish at the top of their division or with a record that is good enough to earn a Wild Card spot. In each division, there are teams that gravitate toward the top, with each division in the MLB standings having its own perennial contenders. 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.

The Cardinals won again Sunday, extending their winning streak to 16 games. 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. As a result, the Blue Jays now sit in the second wild card position, their record and .562 winning percentage identical to that of the Yankees, who occupy the first. There's no room for error in the next two weeks -- the Boston Red Sox are breathing down their necks after being ousted from the playoff picture. Oakland's recent surge is keeping their thin postseason odds afloat. In the AL West division they gained on the Astros, and are now six games out with six head-to-heads remaining between them. Heading into Monday, the Pads trailed the Cincinnati Reds by a game-and-a-half for the second wild card spot in the National League.

Thomas B. Shea-USA TODAY SportsMajor League Baseball releases the 2022 MLB schedule at the beginning of the offseason. The 2022 regular season concludes on Friday, September 30. 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. 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. Whichever team doesn't win the NL West will, one, be disappointed and, two, host the Wild Card game. The Cardinals, buoyed by their current 12-game winning streak — their longest since 1982 — are sitting pretty for that second Wild Card.

The Phillies are more focused on the Braves than any of the teams here. For this weekend, the schedule is certainly in the Dodgers' favor. Will see the last-place Arizona Diamondbacks, a team they have beaten 14 out of 16 games this season.

Meanwhile, the Giants will head to Coors Field for three games versus the Rockies. The Giants are 12-4 against Colorado this year, but the Rockies' record at home is the third-best mark in the NL. The Dodgers last week improved their standing in the National League West, but still find themselves still in position to host the wild card game. The jumble of teams angling to play them appears to be clearing up, thanks to a surge by the Cardinals. 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. 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.

St. Louis wound up making up significant ground in the standings by stringing together a franchise-record 17-game winning streak. Due to the collective bargaining agreement expiring this offseason, the 2022 season and postseason format could look very different. Major League Baseball expanded its playoff field in the COVID shortened 2020 season but the playoffs returned to the standard 10-team format in 2021. However, it will be part of CBA negotiations this winter with expansion very likely. The Padres' sudden fall from grace is one of the more compelling stories of this season and will undoubtedly lead to major changes during the winter. They could be formally eliminated from playoff contention this weekend versus the Braves.

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.

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. The Phillies' situation was not looking good even before Wednesday's game, as they were facing the Braves and needed a sweep to still have a realistic shot at this division. Instead, they lost on Tuesday, and then they followed it up with another loss Wednesday. Max Fried was fantastic, and the Braves won by a comfortable five-run margin. The division is still technically not over, but the two teams play another game on Thursday with the Braves' magic number at one.

They can clinch on Thursday, and if not they clinch with either a win or a Phillies loss. 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. The Oakland-Seattle series is still relevant to the wild-card hunt, but both teams need Toronto to win two of three games to have a decent chance going into the weekend. This is the part where fans of teams in playoff spots — or those just outside — really start to get out the calculators.