Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports
There’s only one playoff race this year. That might not sound right to you. The Yankees and Orioles are deadlocked in the AL East. The Guardians are holding the Twins and Royals at bay in the Central. The Padres are looking menacingly northwards toward LA. But those aren’t playoff races, because everyone involved is making the playoffs either way. The only race where the winner is in and the loser is out is the one for the last NL Wild Card spot, and it’s taking place between divisional rivals: the Mets and the Braves.
It’s weird seeing so little actual drama in September. Those two teams are the only ones with playoff odds between 20% and 80% right now. That’s rare for this time of year. Despite no truly dominant teams, the playoff races are abnormally set in stone this year. That only makes the last race more exciting, though.
In one corner, we have the Braves, who came into the year as the best team in baseball. They were so good, in fact, that we used them as a model when delving into some new depth chart data this spring. The Braves are a great team playing without their very top players and doing fairly well anyway.
The other side of the race is a band of merry overachievers who just happen to play on a historically heartbreaking team. The Mets didn’t come into the season as playoff favorites. This was supposed to be a down year for them, the bridge between last year’s Justin Verlander/Max Scherzer bonanza and a future filled with Uncle Steve’s marquee additions and ticker tape parades.
Baseball Prospectus maintains their own playoff odds. They agree with our take on the race. Baseball Reference isn’t as sure. Finally, gambling markets have it pretty close to both us and BP.
The quality of the remaining games could be the key factor. The Mets have more hard games left than easy ones, while the Braves have a slightly easier road. They play opponents with an aggregate .491 true talent, while we peg New York’s opposition at .509 true talent. That’s a fairly large gap.
Another feather in Atlanta’s cap? They play at home for the three games the two teams will play against each other. Home teams win around 54% of the time in baseball over the long run. A 54% chance of winning a single game translates to a 56% chance of winning a three-game series, so even if the Mets and Braves were evenly matched, the tiebreaker edge would go to Atlanta.
That just leaves the biggest argument in favor of the Braves: They’re better. There’s nothing that suggests that from the way the teams have played in 2024, to be clear. The two are extremely close in run differential – both are scoring and allowing runs at the pace you’d expect from borderline playoff teams.
