Why it's important for Phillies to grab No. 1 Wild Card spot

This story was excerpted from Todd Zolecki’s Phillies Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

A Wednesday thought exercise:

Is there a National League team’s roster you’d trade the Phillies’ for?

The Braves? They are the best team in baseball. The Dodgers? Eh, possibly. What about the Giants, Brewers, Cubs, Reds, Marlins or D-backs? The guess is no.

The Phillies woke up Wednesday with an 82.2 percent chance to make the postseason, according to FanGraphs. Only the Braves (100 percent) and Dodgers (99.8 percent) have better odds. This should not surprise anybody. The Phillies are one of the best teams in baseball (yes, even when they dropped two of three to Pittsburgh, like they did a couple weekends ago). Their rotation is tied for the best WAR in baseball with the Twins (12.4), according to FanGraphs. Their bullpen has the second-best ERA since April 16 (3.16). The offense has underperformed to this point, but it is heating up.

The Phillies are 37-20 (.649) since June 2, which is a 105-win pace over a 162-game season.

It is not to say they are without flaws. They have their share. Not that they will win the NL pennant again. It is difficult to repeat. The only NL teams to repeat since the Braves in the mid-1990s are the 2008-09 Phillies and the 2017-18 Dodgers.

But the Phillies can improve their chances to repeat if they win the No. 1 NL Wild Card. The top Wild Card team will host a best-of-three series against the No. 2 Wild Card.

The Giants and Phillies are currently tied for the No. 1 Wild Card spot, but if the season ended today, the Giants would host the Phillies in San Francisco.

Gabe Kapler vs. the Phillies would be a fun matchup wherever the location, but the Phils want that series at home. Oracle Park has been a house of horrors for the Phils for the past decade (even longer, if you remember the 2010 NL Championship Series). They are 6-23 (.207) in San Francisco since the beginning of 2014. They have lost seven in a row there, winning their last game on June 19, 2021.

The top Wild Card is important, so it is a good time to review the rules for tiebreakers. Remember, there are no more Game 163s, if teams finish the regular season tied.

The first tiebreaker is head-to-head record. If more than two teams are tied, the team with the best combined winning percentage against the other teams wins the tiebreaker. The Phillies already won tiebreakers against the D-backs (4-3), Cubs (5-1) and Reds (4-3). Their season series with the Marlins is tied (5-5). The Phillies and Marlins play in a three-game series Sept. 8-10 at Citizens Bank Park.

But the Phillies trail season series against the Giants (0-3) and Brewers (1-2). The Phillies host the Giants in a three-game series later this month. They play three games in Milwaukee next month. If the Phillies sweep the Giants or win two of three against Milwaukee to tie, the second tiebreaker becomes intradivision record.

Say the Phillies sweep the Giants in a couple weeks to even the season series. The Giants would still win the tiebreaker based on a better intradivision record. The Giants are 18-11 against the NL West, while the Phillies are 13-17 against the NL East.

The Phillies can make any tiebreakers meaningless if they just keep playing at the clip they’ve been playing since early June. That’s what they’re trying to do during this 10-game homestand.

“Typically, we’ve played well at home,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said. “Guys like playing here. It’s a great opportunity to win some games and create some distance between us and other teams in the Wild Card race.”