Michael King loves baseball and fun as much as the newest blond in the clubhouse, but he\u2019s not quite on the same page as Manny Machado, who said Tuesday night that he \u201cwouldn\u2019t be opposed\u201d to the final wild-card spot coming down to the last series of the weekend against the Diamondbacks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d be very opposed to it,\u201d King said with a smile Wednesday as he dressed for his between-start bullpen. \u201cI would much prefer to have a little rocking-chair series and be prepared for whoever we\u2019re playing in the wild card.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yeah. Good luck with that.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, the Padres and Diamondbacks swapped spots in the standings for the sixth time in 11 days, with San Diego completing a sweep of the scuffling Nationals while Arizona settled for two of three at lowly Kansas City.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s how delicate the Padres\u2019 half-game grip is on the NL\u2019s final wild-card spot as they embark on a road trip through San Francisco and Colorado, the two bottom-feeders in the National League West. Both the Padres and D-backs were off Thursday.<\/p>\n
FanGraphs.com as of Thursday morning pegged the Padres\u2019 playoff odds at 57.5%, but they\u2019ve been roughly where Arizona\u2019s postseason odds are now (45.1%) on the days they\u2019ve found themselves peering up at the Diamondbacks in the standings.<\/p>\n
Meaning, the NL\u2019s third wild-card spot is up for grabs over the final 16 games of the season.<\/p>\n
Put an asterisk on the last weekend of the season: Unless the Padres or Diamondbacks can build a four-game lead or the teams ahead of them in the wild-card chase fall apart (more on that in a bit), they will essentially be beginning the postseason Sept. 25-27 at Petco Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt probably will (come down to that),\u201d Machado said. \u201cHopefully not, but I mean, I wouldn\u2019t be opposed to it. Love baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meaningful baseball is what it\u2019s all about this time of year, and the Padres are at least relishing their new lease on the season after teetering on the brink of irrelevance shortly before the trade deadline.<\/p>\n
Their postseason odds shrank as low as 7.4% after losing five of seven coming out of the All-Star break and swelled to more than 70% during an MLB-best 21-7 run that gave the Padres a two-game cushion on the Diamondbacks.<\/p>\n
The Padres were on the verge of extending that lead to three games when they had the bases loaded with one out in the bottom of the 10th inning against the Pirates on Aug. 24. The Diamondbacks had already been blanked by the Cubs that day, but Jackson Merrill struck out on three straight pitches, Xander Bogaerts lined out and the Padres lost in 12 innings.<\/p>\n
The seesawing hasn\u2019t stopped since.<\/p>\n
Given the alternative, the Padres are at least enjoying the ride for what it is.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s fun baseball,\u201d first baseman Ty France said. \u201c \u2026 It\u2019d be nice to be up 15 games, but that\u2019s not where we\u2019re at right now. We\u2019re in a spot where we need to keep winning baseball games and it\u2019s going to probably come down to the last weekend of the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
So long as the Padres at least take care of their own business.<\/p>\n
The Padres had, as of Thursday, the easiest remaining schedule of the four teams battling for wild-card spots. Their remaining opponents have won just 48% of their games this season.<\/p>\n
The Phillies\u2019 remaining opponents have won 54.4% of their games. The Cubs\u2019 foes have won 51.8%, while the D-backs\u2019 opponents have won 49.4%.<\/p>\n
The Padres begin their slate with three straight series against losing teams \u2014 the Giants, Rockies and Marlins \u2014 before playing the toughest opponent on any wild-card hopeful\u2019s remaining schedule: the Dodgers in Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
Dave Roberts\u2019 team may still be playing for home-field advantage in the penultimate series of the season.<\/p>\n
The Diamondbacks, on the other hand, face a Rangers team on the fringe of a wild-card race, the Marlins and a Yankees team that could still be fighting for the AL East crown. They also get a trip to Coors Field against the down-and-out Rockies, but three games in Denver directly leading into a make-or-break series in San Diego is enough to make any pitching coach\u2019s ulcers flare up.<\/p>\n
Then consider this: The Cubs lost four in a row heading into Thursday to cede the top wild-card spot to the Phillies, whose tough finish includes home games against two teams (the Brewers and Rays) who could either be fighting for No. 1 seeds or using the final days of the season to set up pitching for the postseason.<\/p>\n
The tougher portion of the Cubs\u2019 remaining schedule includes a home series against the NL East-leading Braves and a trip to face the playoff-bound Red Sox for the final weekend of the season.<\/p>\n
So maybe, just maybe, it\u2019s not strictly a Padres-or-Diamondbacks proposition these final two-plus weeks of the season.<\/p>\n
Either way, it\u2019s a lot of fun to game out considering the alternatives the Padres were flirting with in July.<\/p>\n
King would just prefer to watch the final weekend from the dugout in advance of his Game 1 NL Wild Card Series start than having to actually pitch the Padres past the Diamondbacks that final weekend.<\/p>\n
\u201cDerek Jeter played like one game that didn\u2019t actually matter in his whole career,\u201d King said. \u201cI guess what I will say is I would like for that series not to matter because we\u2019re already in the playoffs, and that\u2019s why it doesn\u2019t matter. But it is September baseball. It feels like there\u2019s that sense of urgency that is a little uptick, and we\u2019ve got to make sure that we\u2019re winning every game we can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael King loves baseball and fun as much as the newest blond in the clubhouse, but he\u2019s not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459814,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[181,1334,74,76,75,2611,127,1696],"class_list":["post-459813","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-latest-headlines","tag-mlb","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sports","tag-top-stories-sdut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459813","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459813"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459813\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459814"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}