Hard as it is to believe, we’re about to reach the final month of the 2023 regular season — a 162-game marathon turned into a four-week sprint. It’s now or never, and the Wild Card races in both leagues are looking like they’ll go right down to the wire once again. The third Wild Card spot, first implemented last season, will give us six teams in the postseason on each side and byes for the top two seeds in each league. That means the regular-season stakes have never been higher, or involved more teams — and that added drama is palpable as we near the month of September.
So: Where does your favorite team stand? Below we’ll go over the NL Wild Card picture with up-to-the-minute standings and analysis.
NL Wild Card standings, August 28
1st Wild Card: Philadelphia Phillies — 72-58, +3.5
2nd Wild Card: Chicago Cubs — 69-61, +0.5
3rd Wild Card: Arizona Diamondbacks — 69-62, —
San Francisco Giants — 67-63, 1.5 GB
Cincinnati Reds — 68-64, 0.5 GB
Miami Marlins — 66-65, 3.0 GB
San Diego Padres — 61-70, 8.0 GB
After a few weeks in which it seemed like no one wanted to actually grab hold of an NL Wild Card spot, we’ve seen some much better baseball of late. Chicago and Arizona have won a combined 15 of their last 20 games, including the D-backs taking two of three against the Reds over the weekend to edge into the lead for the third and final berth. (For now, at least, as the Reds still lurk just two games back in the loss column.)
There doesn’t figure to be a ton of upward movement here in the season’s final weeks, as the Braves and Dodgers have the NL East and NL West, respectively, on lockdown, and the Brewers are scorching hot and have stretched their NL Central lead over the Cubs to four games — though things could change quickly as Milwaukee and Chicago kick off a mammoth series at Wrigley Field on Monday night. The Phillies would seem to be more or less above the fray, 3.5 games clear of the pack, but the rest of these standings will be a knockdown, drag-out fight to the finish in September.
The Giants have been particularly poor of late, losers of seven of their last 10 as they welcome Cincy to town for another crucial three-game set starting on Monday night. Chicago feels like the most complete team, or at least the team with the fewest glaring flaws, although the back-end of their rotation remains awfully sketchy — especially with Marcus Stroman out with an injury. The Cubs also have by far the easiest remaining schedule of any of these teams, with a remaining opponent winning percentage of just .476 and series against the Rockies (twice) and Pirates still left to play. Philly, by contrast, has the single hardest remaining schedule in the Majors with a .529 opponent winning percentage, while the slumping Marlins (.511) also have their work cut out for them.
