Padres-Diamondbacks NL Wild Card race could hinge on schedule mismatch

The baseball season turns from a marathon to a sprint after Labor Day, and the sprint has begun. A half-game gap separates the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks for the final Wild Card spot in the National League. The Miami Marlins, St. Louis Cardinals, and Pittsburgh Pirates could get hot, but it’s a two-team race.

The schedule may be the difference down the stretch. The series between the two teams at the end of the year looks like the most meaningful final-weekend series. If everything holds, it’ll function like an extra round of the playoffs. Each team has won five games in their season series, so it should be big. But the series before may dictate who needs it more.

Dodgers-Rockies mismatch could reshape the NL Wild Card race

Before the final weekend, the two teams will play a very different series. The Padres will go to Dodger Stadium for a three-game set. The division won’t have any relevance, but the Los Angeles Dodgers could be fighting for a bye through the Wild Card round. Even with their struggles over the past few weeks, they are still the defending champs and one of the best teams in all of baseball. 

In the other corner, the Diamondbacks will head to Coors Field to take on the worst team in the National League, the Colorado Rockies. They’re currently 55-88 with the second-worst run differential in all of baseball. As bad as they are, they’ve been worse for over a month now. 

The schedule is the schedule, and the Padres will also get four more against the Rockies coming up next week, but timing can be everything. The Diamondbacks will get a chance to roll against a bad team that checked out some time ago, while the Padres will have to fight for everything against a great team trying to become a true dynasty.

There’s a version where none of this matters. The Padres have been on fire. They lost their first two series after the break, falling to 50-53. Heading into play Tuesday, they’re 26-15 since then. If they continue that pace, the last series will be a tune-up for them as well. They’ve already shown they can make up ground, as they were more than five games back in July and are now within a half-game.

The Padres’ rotation is in much better shape now as well. Nick Pivetta’s return gives them a full rotation that can actually make a difference, giving Craig Stammen an option that he didn’t have until very recently. There’s also the fact that maybe the three-game set against the Dodgers is better preparatory work for a huge series than dominating a bad team. It’s a different spin on the rest vs. rust argument.

Again, others remain mathematically alive too. The Marlins and Cardinals are close enough on paper to matter if either stumbles down the stretch, but neither has shown the consistency to truly make a run to close the gap. Most projections see this as a two-team race, and it's hard to argue with those projections. Until something indicates otherwise, this is a two-team race, which only raises the stakes on the mismatched final week ahead of it.

The math at the top of the standings is what it is, though. The Padres and Diamondbacks are tied in the loss column, with the Diamondbacks one win ahead. Three weeks remain to see how this plays out. But if the Diamondbacks show up to their regular-season finale series looking sharper because they’ve gained confidence beating up on an inferior opponent, the schedule will certainly play a role in the end result. Depending on who you’re rooting for, there’ll be plenty of blame or credit to go around.

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