NL Playoff Outlook: Dodgers Lead, Wild Card Race Heats Up

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00:00Our division leaders, the RS first in the National League.

00:03What that playoff picture looks like at this current moment.

00:06The Dodgers have a five and a half game lead in the National League West.

00:10They are the top team in the NL still would be that one seed by a half game in front of

00:15the Cubbies who have a one game lead in the NL Central.

00:18The Phillies still holding on to a half game advantage over the New York Mets in the NL

00:22East.

00:23But the Brewers, the hottest team in the National League, seven consecutive wins into the All-Star

00:28break.

00:28Now that top wildcard spot, the Mets have the second, the Padres, a half game advantage

00:33over their divisional mates in the Giants for the third and final NL wildcard spot.

00:39San Francisco, not all that far back.

00:41St.

00:41Louis kind of cooling down after being one of those more positively surprising teams to start

00:47off the year, but still only a game and a half back.

00:50The RS are the wet Redbirds from a wildcard position.

00:53Yeah, it'll be fun to watch it play out and also understand this.

00:56When we get the extra wildcard that they put in just a few years ago, that means those

01:00teams that aren't used to making the playoffs are still hanging around.

01:03Thus, the trade deadline in two weeks makes it harder to acquire players from those teams

01:07unless they're just adamant about selling and it's not going to work out.

01:10We're going to shed payroll, which, you know, it used to be the farm systems that we joke,

01:14the Kansas City Royals, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and the Miami Marlins would just fire up their

01:18best players.

01:18Who wants them?

01:19Come take them.

01:20Dodgers, Yankees, Philadelphia Phillies, whoever it might be.

01:23Come in and get that extra help to fortify your bullpen, your starting rotation, and or

01:27your one through nine on a day-to-day basis.

01:29But there is a lot of baseball to play.

01:31That's what we always look at and say, well, this team's five back.

01:33This team's six back.

01:34You can make that up in a week and a half.

01:35But it is also been so hard to climb teams because you might just look at the wildcard

01:40race and say, we're five and a half games back.

01:42But not if five teams are in between you.

01:44It's not one team you're looking to chase down.

01:46Hey, they're all six in a row.

01:47We won six in a row.

01:48We're in first place.

01:49You might win six in a row and somebody else wins six in a row.

01:51It's like, oh, the team wins five in a row.

01:53Oh, we gained a half of a game here.

01:54That really didn't help us out.

01:55That's what makes it so hard to climb those standings.

01:58Also, some of those teams, like the Cardinals, we didn't even anticipate them being in the

02:02race post-All-Star game at this point, right?

02:05We're heading into the month of August.

02:07So teams are still giving themselves.

02:09And here's what you want to watch out for.

02:11Because coming back today, I like a couple spots here with some underdogs, which we'll go over

02:14a little bit later in the show.

02:15But you understand the pressure on the organizations.

02:18Yes, it's the All-Star break.

02:19But coming right out of that break, looking at, let's just say, the Atlanta Braves, double

02:23digit games back.

02:24They might say, we have seven days here.

02:26You cut that under 10, we'll help you a little bit.

02:29We're not going to go all in because we still probably don't think we're making the playoffs.

02:32But you know what makes that decision easier on Marcelo Zuna?

02:35Hey, we're 12 games back.

02:36Oh, after a week, we're 14 games back.

02:38Yeah, we're selling.

02:39We'll give you guys like a week to 10 days to right the ship to show us we might be in

02:44for the wild card or else we're completely selling out.

02:46It's an interesting one and a half to two weeks coming up here.

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