This may be the longest four days of your life
So, here we are. After 159 games for the Diamondbacks, and an appropriate amount of delight, disaster and angst… We still don’t know if the team will be playing into October. The team holds their fate in their own hands: a sweep of the series against San Diego will not only guarantee a post-season spot, it could end up toppling the Padres out of the #4 seed. Any other result, and the Diamondbacks will find themselves engaging in some final weekend scoreboard watching. Indeed, it could end up that their fate will be unknown even after game #162 is completed, because of the unprecedented postponement of the two Mets-Braves contests until Monday. Results there could play a role.
So, it really does come to this: three games to decide the team’s fate. Despite fears about a September collapse, that hasn’t really happened: certainly not on the scale of 2018’s meltdown when they went 8-19. Arizona have outscored their opponents by ten runs and are 12-11 for the month. That works out to an 85-win pace, pretty close to their overall record. The knife-edge state in which they find themselves for the last weekend is mostly a result of the Mets surging to a 15-6 record in the month. They do find themselves in the odd situation of having scored the most September runs in the majors (143)… and also conceded the most September runs (133). 11-10 wins and 10-9 losses will tend to do that.
Though those have been the exception: over the dozen victories this month, the D-backs have only two “legitimate” saves (discounting Jordan Montgomery’s one for working the last three innings in a 14-4 blowout). If the pattern continues, it might be of help for fans negotiating things this weekend, as the narrower the margin in a game, the more of a grind it puts on the spectators’ nerves. A game where the result is uncertain from the first pitch to the last, can be like sitting on a roller-coaster for three hours – and one where there’s a 50/50 chance of the last drop being into thin air. If the D-backs can jump out early and big against the Padres, I think we would all appreciate it.
There was some discussion on X as to whether or not this season could be considered a success if the team don’t make the playoffs. I can see the case for both sides. Obviously, it’s not an unexpected run to the World Series. But the team has improved. Their Pythag record right now projects to ninety wins, which would be ten games better than in 2023. Admittedly, it isn’t quite reflected in the standings, mostly because last year’s team over-performed by four victories. They were also lucky to make the post-season. Only three sides in baseball history have ever made the playoffs with fewer than Arizona’s 84 wins. That would not sniff the post-season this year in the NL.
What’s undeniable is, despite the doomers proclaiming “season over” after, it seemed, every time the team lost consecutive games, Arizona is playing meaningful baseball into the final weekend, with a chance to go further. There are sixteen teams, already eliminated, whose fans would willingly swap places with us to get that. You don’t have to look very far back to find times when we were among them, and the D-backs’ hopes were basically extinguished before the All-Star break. If you don’t think this year is a massive improvement in the long, dark period from 2020-22, when the team was among the worst in the majors, I don’t know what to tell you.
So let’s TRY and enjoy this weekend – I know that might end up being tough! – and support the D-backs with every breath, until those post-season odds either become a hundred percent or zero.