The Dodgers Have the Easier Nineteen

Five days ago I opened a piece by writing that there was a number that could decide where Atlanta opens October, and that it did not belong to Atlanta. I said the number was 78-61, and that it belonged to the Chicago Cubs.

The shape of that was right. The city was wrong.

The number is .469. It belongs to the Los Angeles Dodgers, and it is the combined winning percentage of everything they have left to play.

What five days did

On Wednesday I printed the top of the National League as Milwaukee 86-53, Los Angeles 82-56, Atlanta 82-57 — Atlanta four games back of the first bye and half a game back of the second. This morning the same three lines read Milwaukee 88-56, Los Angeles 86-57, Atlanta 85-58.

Atlanta went 3-1 across those five days. That is a good stretch in September. It moved them a game and a half closer to the top seed, because Milwaukee went 2-3, and half a game further from the second, because Los Angeles went 4-1. Two directions at once, out of a week in which Atlanta did nothing wrong.

The gaps this morning are 2.5 behind Milwaukee and 1.0 behind the Dodgers. Third in the National League, outright, with nothing tied. And neither of those movements had anything to do with Philadelphia, which is where every camera in this market has been pointed since Friday.

The claim that expired

On August 30, Chase Owens published a piece at House That Hank Built asking whether the Braves would secure a first-round bye. As far as I can find it is the only piece of actual bye analysis in circulation about this team. It contains this sentence:

"As of right now, the Braves have the same record as the Dodgers; because Atlanta won the season series, they currently hold the two seed in the National League."

Read the first three words. Owens dated his own claim, which is more care than most standings writing bothers with. On August 30 it was a defensible thing to put in print.

It is not true this morning, and nobody was careless. Los Angeles have gone 4-1 since; Atlanta have gone 3-1. The head-to-head tiebreaker Owens invoked has not become the wrong tiebreaker — it has become an irrelevant one, because a club a full game back never reaches a tiebreaker at all. Nothing is tied.

That is not a gotcha. It is the ordinary half-life of a standings sentence in September, and it runs in both directions: Reviewing the Brew has Milwaukee holding a 3.5-game lead for a bye. The live figures are 1.5 over Los Angeles and 2.5 over Atlanta. Two ends of the same table, both a step behind it.

The residue

Here is the part nobody has looked at.

Atlanta have nineteen games left. Los Angeles have nineteen. Milwaukee have eighteen. What separates the three is not how many are left but who they are against, and the three schedules are not remotely alike.

Weight every remaining opponent by the number of meetings:

- Atlanta .536 - Milwaukee .513 - Los Angeles .469

Atlanta's nineteen: three against Tampa Bay (.594), three at Chicago (.563), four against Philadelphia (.559), three at Houston (.507), three at Miami (.500), three against Cincinnati (.483).

Los Angeles's nineteen: three against San Diego (.524), three against Miami, seven against Cincinnati, and six against San Francisco (.410).

Count only the games against clubs with losing records. Los Angeles have thirteen of nineteen. Milwaukee have nine of eighteen. Atlanta have three of nineteen.

Now hold the three clubs equal in ability and let only the opponents vary. A .067 difference in opponent quality across nineteen games — .536 against .469 — is worth about 1.3 games. That is 19 × .067 = 1.27, and it is a crude model; it pretends three different teams are the same team, which they are not. But the direction is not crude. Atlanta have to make up one game on Los Angeles while playing a schedule that, on its own, is worth roughly a game and a quarter in the Dodgers' favour.

The gap in the standings is smaller than the gap in the schedule.

Two days ago I argued that opponent quality was no excuse for what Atlanta's offence had already done on the road, and it wasn't: those opponents were league-average and the schedule explained nothing. This is the same question pointed the other way down the calendar, and about three clubs rather than one. Backward, schedule is an alibi. Forward, it is a variable — and right now the largest one left.

There is a sharper version of the same fact. Across all three contenders' remaining schedules — fifty-six games between them — there are exactly three against a team currently above .580. On today's records Milwaukee have none of them and Los Angeles have none of them. All three belong to Atlanta, and all three are Tampa Bay, who are 85-58, lead the American League East by four, and arrive at Truist Park tomorrow night.

What third actually costs

I stated the bracket rule once already this month and I am not going to state it again; the short version is that the two byes go to the top two division winners, and every Wild Card game is played in the higher seed's park. I wrote it out on September 2 and none of it has changed.

Which means the cost of finishing third is not a road trip. Atlanta as the 3 seed would host all three games at Truist Park; they would be at home, and they would be playing while Milwaukee and Los Angeles were not. That is the price, and it is easy to underrate because it does not look like a punishment. It is three extra games. The Wild Card round opens Tuesday, September 29 and the Division Series open Saturday, October 3 — four days to fit three games and whatever rest survives them. A club that needs all three walks into the Division Series having already spent the arms it wanted lined up, against an opponent that has not played since the regular season ended.

Nobody hangs a banner for a bye. It is also the difference between playing a round and skipping one.

The honest part

One game with nineteen to play is not a deficit. It is a rounding error with three weeks of baseball attached, and byes are not lost in the first week of September. They are lost in the last one. Atlanta could take eleven of nineteen and pass the Dodgers on a Thursday nobody remembers. The .469 is an average, and averages get beaten.

And the division is not a consolation prize. Atlanta have not won the National League East since 2023. The magic number is fifteen with nineteen to play, and Owens — whose sentence I have spent this morning correcting — calls it "Atlanta's first NL East crown since 2023" in the same article. On the size of that, he and I agree completely.

But they are two prizes on two clocks, and only one of them is genuinely in doubt. The division gets settled against a calendar that is already behind Atlanta; Philadelphia are the club that has to make up five games, and three of their four remaining chances are at Truist Park. The bye has to be won across the hardest nineteen games anybody in this race has left, beginning tomorrow night, at home, against a team that has won and lost exactly as often as Atlanta have.

Game four in Philadelphia is at 1:05 this afternoon, Grant Holmes listed to start opposite Jesús Luzardo, Atlanta ahead in the series 2-1 after winning Sunday in the ninth on Austin Riley's triple off Jhoan Duran. Whatever the scoreboard reads at four o'clock, the standings page tomorrow morning will lead with a division lead, and the division lead is not the thing being decided.

Five days ago I wrote that the answer was being written in two cities and that only one of them was on the schedule. That part holds. I simply named the wrong second city — and the second city has the easy part.