NL Wild Card standings: SF Giants’ playoff hopes on life support

Sep 3, 2024, 7:42 AM

SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - SEPTEMBER 01: Logan Webb #62 of the San Francisco Giants looks on from ...

(Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images)

Lead Editor & Kings Beat Writer

The road to October baseball is full of bumps, but for the San Francisco Giants, the 2024 season has been full of roadblocks.

San Francisco (68-70) has put up a lot of those roadblocks themselves, including a lackluster weekend series against the lowly Miami Marlins that saw the fish take two of three games against a Giants team that is desperate to make up ground in the National League Wild Card standings.

With just 24 games remaining, San Francisco has slipped 6.5 games behind the third and final NL Wild Card spot, giving them a 0.3% chance to make the playoffs, per FanGraphs.

Baseball Reference doesn’t give the Giants much better odds, with San Francisco having a 0.5% chance of overcoming the 6.5-game hurdle over the final month of the regular season.

The Giants can only blame themselves for slipping this far out of the NL Wild Card picture, having lost seven of their past ten games at a crucial point in the regular season.

Here’s an updated look at the NL Wild Card standings with 24 games to go:

NL Wild Card Standings

Closing a 6.5-game gap is unlikely but not impossible for San Francisco, although it would take quite an impressive stretch of play in the coming weeks.

Unfortunately for the Giants, they currently hold the toughest remaining schedule in Major League Baseball, per Tankathon. All eight of San Francisco’s remaining series will be against teams that currently hold .500 records or better, including this week’s three-game set against the Arizona Diamondbacks.

The Giants will play six games against the D-Backs–the holder of the third NL Wild Card spot–and six games against the San Diego Padres–the top NL Wild Card holder–over the final month of play.

Can San Francisco close the gap in the standings during those series? Unlikely. But Arizona (seventh-hardest remaining schedule) has some tough series ahead of them that include meetings with the Milwaukee Brewers (seven games) and Houston Astros (three games).

The margin for error is slim to none, and it’s likely that anything outside of a three-game sweep of the D-Backs this week could spell the end of the Giants’ 2024 postseason hopes.