Three games. That's all anybody has left now. 159 games with a single weekend to sort out what's what. Buckle up.
Thursday night saw some major dominoes fall: The Astros beat the Athletics 7-5 to pull dead even with Texas at 79-80 in the AL West. Texas beat the Mets 3-1 on the same night, but because Houston owns the tiebreaker, the Rangers still woke up Friday out of a playoff spot they had been holding all week. San Diego beat the Dodgers, which punched the Padres' ticket and handed Milwaukee the 1 seed without the Brewers having to lift a finger. Cleveland won 1-0 in Boston. The White Sox won 9-1 in Kansas City. Nobody in the AL Central blinked.
So here is where it all stands heading into Friday's 17-game slate, what every team needs to clinch, who holds which tiebreaker, and which clubhouses have every reason in the world to rest people this weekend.
If The Playoffs Started Tonight
Seeds 1 and 2 get the bye. Seeds 3 and 4 host every game of the best-of-three Wild Card round, with 6 at 3 and 5 at 4.
American League
| Seed | Team | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rays | 96-63 | Division · bye · locked |
| 2 | Guardians | 83-76 | Division · bye |
| 3 | Astros | 79-80 | Division · hosts |
| 4 | Yankees | 92-67 | Wild Card · hosts · locked |
| 5 | Red Sox | 85-74 | Wild Card |
| 6 | White Sox | 82-77 | Wild Card |
First out: Rangers 79-80, tied with Houston and holding the short end of the tiebreaker.
National League
| Seed | Team | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Brewers | 100-59 | Division · bye · locked |
| 2 | Dodgers | 97-62 | Division · bye · locked |
| 3 | Braves | 93-66 | Division · hosts · locked |
| 4 | Padres | 89-70 | Wild Card · hosts |
| 5 | Cubs | 88-71 | Wild Card |
| 6 | Phillies | 87-72 | Wild Card |
First out: Diamondbacks 85-74, two games back of Philadelphia.
Remember: the 1 and 2 seeds from each league get automatic byes. That would give us White Sox at Astros and Red Sox at Yankees in the American League Wild Card, and Phillies at Braves and Cubs at Padres in the National League. Four of those eight teams are still fighting for where they land, and one of the spots belongs to whoever survives the AL West pillow fight.
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Every Clinch Scenario Still Out There
Five races in all. Two are for divisions, one is for the last NL playoff spot, and two are for seeding. Let's cover all of them in the order of how much is on the line.
AL West — Astros 79-80, Rangers 79-80. Winner-take-all and loser goes home. There is no Wild Card fallback for either club, so this one is for the season. Houston went 9-4 against Texas this year, which means a tie belongs to the Astros, and their magic number is three. Texas has to finish ahead outright, which means gaining a full game in three days. The Rangers play three in Minnesota against a 75-84 Twins team. The Astros play three more in West Sacramento against a 63-96 Athletics team they just beat on Thursday on the back of a random Lucas Spence triple dong (his first three long balls of the season!).
And then there is the history, which is ugly. The worst record ever by a playoff team in a full 162-game season belongs to the 2005 Padres at 82-80. Whoever wins this division has to go 3-0 just to match that. Go 2-1 and you have an 81-81 division champion, the worst record for a playoff team in a full season ever. Go 1-2 or worse and baseball gets its first-ever division winner with a losing record, and sadly it gets to host all three games of a Wild Card series. Wild times.
AL Central — Guardians 83-76, White Sox 82-77. Both teams are already in the postseason, but the prize is still worth it: a divisional title, and more imporantly, a bye. Loser is almost certainly the 6 seed, packing a bag for Houston or Texas. The White Sox took the season series 7-6, so a tie goes to Chicago and Cleveland's magic number is three. The Guardians play three in Kansas City against a 68-91 Royals team. The White Sox get the 57-102 Rockies at home for three, which is about as soft a finish as anybody in baseball has.
NL Wild Card — Phillies 87-72, Diamondbacks 85-74. Arizona is two back of the last spot with three to play, and all three are in San Diego. Philadelphia hosts a Rays team that has nothing left to play for. The D-backs' elimination number is two: any combination of two Phillies wins or two Arizona losses ends it. If it does come down to a straight tie between those two, the teams split their six games 3-3 and it goes to intradivision record, where Arizona (31-18) is way ahead of Philadelphia (28-24). So the D-backs need to gain two games, and a gain of two gets them in.
NL 4 seed — Padres 89-70, Cubs 88-71. Both teams are in. This is about who hosts the Wild Card round. San Diego is a game up, but the Cubs went 5-1 against them, so a tie goes to Chicago. That makes San Diego's magic number for the 4 seed three. Philadelphia is technically alive for it, too: the Phillies went 6-0 against the Padres but 1-6 against the Cubs, so they would need to sweep the Rays and have both of those clubs stumble. The Cubs have the harder weekend on paper with two in Boston Friday and one on Saturday (Sunday weather prompted the Friday doubleheader). The Padres get the D-backs at home, a team that is playing for its life.
AL 5 seed — Red Sox 85-74. This is effectively locked, but there is exactly one path out of it and it is funny. If Boston goes 0-3, the White Sox go 3-0 and Cleveland goes 2-1, Chicago takes the division on the tiebreaker and the Guardians finish tied with the Red Sox at 85-77. The two teams split their season series 3-3, Cleveland wins on intradivision record, and Boston falls to the 6 seed. Which would send the Red Sox to face a .500-ish AL West winner instead of the Yankees in the Bronx. I am not sure anybody in Boston would be too broken up about that.
Everything else is done. Tampa Bay is the AL 1 seed with the best record in the league. Milwaukee has the best record in baseball, which means home field all the way through the World Series. The Dodgers are the 2, the Braves are the 3 and the Yankees are the 4 no matter what happens over the next three days.
All 17 Games On Friday's Slate
Every team in baseball plays Friday, two doubleheaders included. In first-pitch order, with records and what each club is playing for. All times Eastern.
1:05 p.m. ET — Cubs (88-71) at Red Sox (85-74), Game One. Clay Holmes for Chicago, TBD for Boston. The Cubs are a game behind San Diego for the 4 seed with the tiebreaker in hand, so they are playing this one straight. Boston is sitting in the 5 seed and heading into a day-night doubleheader. Somebody in that home dugout is getting a day off, and it is probably more than one somebody.
4:05 p.m. ET — Orioles (78-81) at Yankees (92-67), Game One. Trevor Rogers against Brendan Beck. Baltimore is eliminated and New York is locked into the 4 seed, which makes this the least consequential game on the board. Game two follows with Brandon Young going for the Orioles and the Yankees still TBD.
6:05 p.m. ET — Cubs at Red Sox, Game Two. Supposedly it's David Peterson against Brayan Bello now. Same stakes as the opener, and a second game in one day is where you see the lineup card that tells you what Boston actually thinks of its seed.
6:40 p.m. ET — Pirates (81-78) at Tigers (74-85). Bubba Chandler against Jackson Jobe, which is two very live young arms in a game with nothing riding on it. Pittsburgh finishing above .500 would be a nice little story, and that is about it.
6:40 p.m. ET — Rays (96-63) at Phillies (87-72). Freddy Peralta against Cristopher Sánchez. Tampa Bay has had the 1 seed wrapped up for days and has every reason to treat this weekend like spring training in September. Philadelphia is protecting a two-game lead on Arizona for the last spot, and Sánchez on the mound tells you the Phillies know it.
6:45 p.m. ET — Mets (73-86) at Nationals (75-84). TBD against Andrew Alvarez. Both eliminated, both counting the days.
7:07 p.m. ET — Reds (74-85) at Blue Jays (77-82). Nick Lodolo against TBD. Both eliminated.
7:10 p.m. ET — Braves (93-66) at Marlins (78-81). TBD against Eury Pérez. Atlanta is locked into the 3 seed and will host the Wild Card round no matter what. I would not expect to see a lot of the regulars in the late innings.
7:40 p.m. ET — Guardians (83-76) at Royals (68-91). Gavin Williams against Noah Cameron. Cleveland's magic number is three, and this is the start of three games against the worst team it could have asked for outside of Colorado. A win plus a White Sox loss gets that number to one.
7:40 p.m. ET — Rockies (57-102) at White Sox (82-77). Tomoyuki Sugano against Sean Burke. Chicago needs one game on Cleveland and gets the worst team in baseball at home three straight times to find it. If you are looking for the one team with the best reason to win out this weekend, it is this one.
7:40 p.m. ET — Cardinals (77-82) at Brewers (100-59). Michael McGreevy against Robert Gasser. Milwaukee has the 1 seed, the best record in baseball and home field through October, all locked. Expect a lot of rest and a lot of guys you would need a roster sheet to identify.
8:10 p.m. ET — Rangers (79-80) at Twins (75-84). Jacob deGrom against Joe Ryan. Texas is out of the playoffs as of this morning and needs to finish a game ahead of Houston to get back in, so this is as close to an elimination game as a Friday gets. deGrom on the mound is the Rangers saying so out loud.
9:40 p.m. ET — Astros (79-80) at Athletics (63-96). TBD against Jacob Lopez. Houston has the tiebreaker, a magic number of three and a lineup that just scored seven on this same staff. The A's would love nothing more than to play spoiler, for whatever that is worth from a 63-win team.
9:40 p.m. ET — D-backs (85-74) at Padres (89-70). Brandon Pfaadt against TBD. Arizona has to win, full stop, and probably needs to win all three in San Diego. The Padres are a game up on the Cubs for the 4 seed, so they cannot exactly roll out the B team either. Both sides playing it straight makes this the best game of the late window.
10:10 p.m. ET — Angels (61-98) at Mariners (74-85). Reid Detmers against Bryce Miller. Both eliminated, and both finishing out the string.
10:15 p.m. ET — Dodgers (97-62) at Giants (65-94). Tarik Skubal against Yunior Marte. Los Angeles is locked into the 2 seed, so Skubal going here is a tune-up and nothing more. Five tidy innings and a handshake would be my guess.
What The Market Thinks Of All That
Kalshi prices every one of these races, and the interesting part of this weekend is where the prices and the models do not agree.
Start with the World Series board, read late Thursday night, against FanGraphs:
| Team | Kalshi | All-in after fee | Effective odds | FanGraphs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dodgers | 31.5¢ | 33.0% | +203 | 31.6% |
| Brewers | 16.6¢ | 17.6% | +469 | 13.7% |
| Rays | 11.1¢ | 11.8% | +748 | 10.2% |
| Yankees | 8.8¢ | 9.4% | +968 | 6.9% |
| Guardians | 4.4¢ | 4.7% | +2,030 | 8.0% |
| Cubs | 4.1¢ | 4.4% | +2,186 | 5.4% |
| Padres | 5.7¢ | 6.1% | +1,546 | 3.3% |
| White Sox | 2.8¢ | 3.0% | +3,244 | 2.2% |
Kalshi asks with the taker fee of 0.07 × price × (1 − price) added in, then converted to American odds.
The same mirror from Tuesday is still sitting there. The market has the Yankees at 9.4% all-in against a model that says 6.9%, and Cleveland at 4.7% against a model that says 8.0%. It has been that way all week, and it is still the two clubs the seeding format has upside down: the 92-win team without a bye priced like a contender, and the 83-win team holding the bye priced like an afterthought.
San Diego is the new one. At 6.1% all-in, the Padres are priced almost twice as high as FanGraphs has them, after a night where they beat the Dodgers and clinched a spot.
Then the division races:
| Market | Kalshi (bid/ask) | All-in | Effective odds | FanGraphs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Guardians win AL Central | 56¢ / 57¢ | 58.7% | -142 | 68.7% |
| White Sox win AL Central | 38¢ / 41¢ | 42.7% | +134 | 31.3% |
| Astros win AL West | 71¢ / 72¢ | 73.4% | -276 | — |
| Rangers win AL West | 31¢ / 32¢ | 33.5% | +198 | — |
The AL Central is the one where the market and the model part ways. FanGraphs has Chicago at 31.3%. Kalshi has the White Sox at 41 cents. That is a crowd betting on the tiebreaker and on three home games against the Rockies, and it has a real argument.
I am leaving FanGraphs off the AL West rows because Houston's win flipped that race after the model's last update. In the Central, both teams won Thursday, so nothing moved.
Who Actually Has A Reason To Rest Somebody
Locked and loading up the bench: the Rays (1 seed), Brewers (1 seed), Dodgers (2), Braves (3) and Yankees (4). Five clubs with nothing left to gain and a whole lot to lose if somebody tweaks a hamstring in a game that does not count. Add the Red Sox to that list with an asterisk. They have one weird path to the 6 seed and it might even be the better draw.
Playing it straight: Cleveland and the White Sox for a bye. Houston and Texas for their seasons. Arizona and Philadelphia for the last NL spot. San Diego and the Cubs for home field. Those clubhouses are running their real people out there, and their managers are going to be managing like it is October already.
Everybody else: 16 clubs are eliminated, and their lineups this weekend are going to look nothing like their season-long numbers.
The matchups where those two groups collide are the ones worth watching. Rays at Phillies is a locked team with every reason to coast against a team protecting a two-game lead. Cubs at Red Sox is a team chasing a seed against a team playing two in one day with nothing much to chase. Dodgers at Giants has Skubal going on a leash for a team with nothing left to gain. Those are the games where the lineup card matters more than the standings.
Timing matters here too. A locked team has the least to lose by resting people early and the most to lose by sitting them too long, because nobody wants a lineup walking into the playoffs having seen live pitching twice in a week. So my lean is that Friday is the thinnest lineup card of the weekend for the locked teams, and Sunday looks a lot more like the real thing.
Where The Edge Is This Weekend
Kalshi is the most useful tool you have this weekend as a scoreboard with prices on it, and the AL West is the clearest example of why.
Houston's only way into the playoffs is winning the division. There is no Wild Card path left: the Astros max out at 82-80, and the only way the AL Central loser falls to 82-80 is if the Guardians win the division, at which point Houston would already have it clinched. So "Astros win the AL West" and "Astros make the playoffs" are, for all practical purposes, the same bet. Kalshi has the first at 72 cents to buy and the second at 67. Texas is the same story in reverse: 32 cents to win the division, 35 cents bid on making the playoffs, and the Rangers are eliminated from the Wild Card too. One of those two prices is wrong, and my guess is it is the playoff market that has not caught up to Thursday night. I am not telling you which side to take. I am telling you to look at both before you touch either.
Totals in locked-team games, once you know who is actually pitching. Orioles at Yankees has a TBD starting game two for New York in a doubleheader that means nothing to either team. Braves at Marlins has a TBD for Atlanta. A bullpen game is a very different number than a starter, and those announcements tend to land after the lines are already hanging.
Rays at Phillies is the one I would pay the most attention to. Tampa Bay has had its seed locked the longest of anybody, and Philadelphia is starting its best pitcher in a game it needs. If the Rays hand in a lineup card full of call-ups, the number should move, and it might not move fast enough.
And the boring one that makes the most money: shop the number. September totals and moneylines vary more across books than they do in July, because not everybody is modeling September rosters the same way. Run the game through our live odds screen and take the best of DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM and everybody else on the board before you fire.
Final Thoughts
Three games, five races and an AL West that is about to make history in the worst possible way. Whoever comes out of Houston vs. Texas is going to host a playoff series with what could be the worst record any playoff team has ever put up over 162 games, and a better team is going to have to go play there.
Every longshot ticket this weekend is more likely to miss than hit. Arizona at 8 cents needs two games on Philadelphia in three days, and Texas at 32 cents needs to beat a Houston team that owns the tiebreaker. Know the number before you buy it, and remember that nothing here is financial advice.
Last full slates of the year. Let's enjoy every inning.
— Lindy
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