A Small X Beside Atlanta

By the end of Friday night there was a letter beside Atlanta's name on MLB's standings table that had not been there in the morning, a small x, which the table's own legend reads as "Clinched Playoff Berth." This morning the berth came down to one Atlanta win or one Arizona loss, and the win is the one that happened, Atlanta 6, Houston 2 at Daikin Park, the row marked while the game in Phoenix was still unfinished.

The six runs came on three swings. Michael Harris II hit a two-run home run in the fourth off Peter Lambert, with Matt Olson on first after a single, his 26th. Ronald Acuña Jr. hit one in the seventh off AJ Blubaugh, with Drake Baldwin on first after a walk, his 19th. Olson hit one in the ninth off Enyel De Los Santos, with Baldwin on second after a double, his 40th. Baldwin, batting first, as Dex has argued he will in October, scored twice from the leadoff spot and drove in none. Three two-run homers and nothing else is the shape Tuesday's game had at Wrigley Field, and whether this offense travels stays, as it was then, a question for the end of the trip.

Olson's 40th deserves its own paragraph, and the paragraph is mostly rows. It is his second 40-homer season by MLB's year-by-year ledger, the other being the 54 of 2023 that the AP calls a Braves record, and it makes him, per the AP, the fifth player in franchise history with more than one; the other four, by Baseball-Reference's franchise list, are Hank Aaron, Eddie Mathews, Andruw Jones and Acuña Jr. Forty is third in the National League on MLB's leaderboard, behind Kyle Schwarber's 45 and Pete Crow-Armstrong's 44. He has played all 154 of Atlanta's games this year. He finished the night 3-for-5 with two runs, and the two singles before the homer scored him once and stranded him once.

Tyler Mahle pitched six innings on 98 pitches: three hits, one run, one walk, six strikeouts. The walk was Yordan Alvarez in the first. The run came in the fourth, Alvarez doubling and Isaac Paredes singling him home, and after Jose Altuve's single that followed, Mahle retired the last nine batters he faced, by MLB's play-by-play, and left after six with the lead at 2-1. Six innings and one earned run is a quality start by the definition, six or more innings and three or fewer earned runs, and the win made him 7-10 on the season. After Friday the Atlanta portion of that season reads eight starts, 4-1, a 1.28 ERA over 49 1/3 innings, as MLB's own line has it.

Didier Fuentes took the seventh and eighth, two innings and three strikeouts, and gave back a run in the eighth: LaMonte Wade Jr. singled, two outs followed, Alvarez walked, Paredes singled to left to score Wade Jr., and Altuve flied out to Acuña Jr. in right to end it, MLB's play description saying only that much and the AP calling the catch a diving one. The feed credits Fuentes with his 18th hold. Raisel Iglesias pitched the ninth with a four-run lead, three batters, three strikeouts, all swinging, and it was not a save, because a four-run lead is not a save situation for one inning; his season total stays at 33.

Lambert took the loss, six hits and two runs in five and a third innings, and left with the bases loaded and one out in the sixth, where Blubaugh stranded all three.

Atlanta is 90-64. Philadelphia lost at Citi Field, Mets 6, Phillies 3, and is 85-69, five games back by MLB's table, with eight to play for Atlanta, five of them on the road. The division is its own ledger. The AP put the number for closing it at three, and that figure is the AP's; MLB's table showed none for Atlanta tonight. Grant Holmes and Hayden Wesneski are listed for Saturday, and Martín Pérez and Hunter Brown for Sunday.

What was settled is a berth. The letter is x and not y; the division is open, the seed is open, and MLB's tentative postseason schedule has the Wild Card Series beginning Tuesday, September 29 without saying who plays whom. It is the club's eighth postseason in nine years, by Mark Bowman's count at MLB.com and the AP's.

So the line the season had been waiting on was written in Houston, under a closed roof, on three swings and six innings. What is left of September is a smaller job than it was this morning, and there are eight games in which to do it.