Champagne showers are in the forecast as the Phillies open their final week of the regular season Tuesday night at Citizens Bank Park.<\/p>\n
The six-game homestand features visits from the top team in the National League (the Milwaukee Brewers) and the top team in the American League (the Tampa Bay Rays).<\/p>\n
The Phillies will enter Tuesday night\u2019s game against the Brewers with a magic number of 3 to clinch their fifth straight trip to the postseason. That means Garrett Stubbs could be doing the backstroke in the Phillies\u2019 clubhouse as early as Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
The Phils control the third and final NL wild-card spot with a four-game advantage over the Arizona Diamondbacks, currently the last team out. Any combination of three Phillies wins or three Arizona losses would put the Phils in the postseason. \u00a0<\/p>\n
While Baseball-Reference.com gives the Phillies a 98 percent chance of making the postseason, it\u2019s still unclear where they will play a first-round Wild Card Series next week.<\/p>\n
With six games remaining, the Phils are a game behind the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres, who are tied for the top NL wild-card spot. The Phils still have a chance to claim the first wild-card spot, which would make them the NL\u2019s No. 4 overall seed and keep them at home for the best-of-three first-round series.<\/p>\n
Finishing as the second (No. 5 seed) or third (No. 6) seed would put the Phils on the road for the first round. Based on the standings today, the Phillies, as the No. 6 seed, would travel to No. 3 seed Atlanta for the first round. Atlanta clinched the NL East on Sunday. The Braves went 9-4 against the Phillies this season.<\/p>\n
If the Phils finish as the No. 5 seed, they would open on the road against the No. 4 seed. Based on tiebreakers, that team would currently be the Cubs, who won their season series with the Padres.<\/p>\n
If, by chance, the Phillies, Cubs and Padres all finish with the same record, the Cubs would claim the No. 4 seed with the Phillies as the No. 5 seed over the Padres, based on season-series tiebreakers.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said the team would prioritize making the postseason ahead of striving for the home-field advantage in the first round. So, if the Phillies lock up a postseason berth before the weekend, Zack Wheeler would not pitch Sunday\u2019s regular season finale. He instead would be in place to start Game 1 of the playoffs. Cristopher Sanchez could also be a candidate to start that game, provided the Phillies sew up a postseason berth before his turn comes up again on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Wheeler (13-5, 2.99) pitches Tuesday night against Milwaukee\u2019s Dustin May. Aaron Nola (7-10, 4.49) will start Wednesday night.<\/p>\n
Here’s a look at what the final week of the season looks like for the teams the Phillies are battling.<\/p>\n
CUBS \u2013 They are 87-69, tied with San Diego for the top wild-card spot, with six games to play, three at home against Miami and three at Boston.<\/p>\n
PADRES \u2013 They are 87-69, tied with the Cubs for the top wild-card spot, with six to play, three at the Dodgers followed by three at home against Arizona.<\/p>\n
DIAMONDBACKS \u2013 They are 82-74, four games behind the Phillies, the current No. 6 seed. They finish with three at Colorado and three at San Diego.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Champagne showers are in the forecast as the Phillies open their final week of the regular season Tuesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":856546,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,201779,99],"class_list":["post-856545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-phillies-analysis","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=856545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/856545\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/856546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=856545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=856545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=856545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}