Three National League standings takeaways with Phillies back in second place

Three years ago Sunday, the Phillies won their series finale over the Giants, and it did little — if anything — to improve morale. They moved to 22-29, six games out of a Wild Card spot and 12.5 out of the NL East lead. It was the last game in Joe Girardi’s tenure as manager.  

The Phillies lost their fourth straight game on Sunday to cap off a sweep by the Brewers. It moved them to 36-23.

The point of the non-parallel: Things could be worse. A lot worse!

But the Phillies’ recent mini-slide does move them out of first place in the division, a spot they claimed on May 19 and had held or shared since. So, a bit more than one-third through the regular season and with more than half of MLB idle on Monday, it’s a fair time to take stock of how the National League is taking shape — and how the Phillies fit in.

Here are three early takeaways.

NL East a two-team race? 

No, it’s not. But sooner than we expected, it could be.

The Braves (let’s pretend the Nationals don’t exist) have 9 1/2 games to make up on the Mets in the season’s final four months, while also surpassing the Phillies. There’s more than 100 games to work with, and stranger things have happened — just last year, the Mariners blew a larger lead than the Mets hold, and later (10 games on June 18). They managed to do so in a remarkable one-month span.

Consider than an extreme aberration. FanGraphs gives the Braves a 10.6% chance to win their seventh NL East title in the last eight years, and as things stand, even that feels high. 

If the Mets go 51-52 from here on out, Atlanta would need to go 61-43 — a 95-win pace over a full season — and hope the Phillies don’t do any better than one game over .500 the rest of the way.

If New York or Philadelphia gets to only 92 wins — meaning 55-48 for the former, or 56-47 for the latter, hardly spectacular — Atlanta needs to go 65-39, a 101-win full-season clip. 

The Braves play the Mets seven times, and the Phillies thrice, in June. 6-1 or 3-0 in those matchups would change the outlook. But it’s getting late early for Atlanta’s division hopes. That bodes well for the Phillies.

NL Central stealing a Wild Card spot? 

At the season’s outset, the National League playoff picture could’ve reasonably been predicted like so: three division winners (duh), three Wild Card spots up for grabs among five additional teams, all from the East or West. 

The NL Central would like a word.

If the season ended Sunday, the surprising Cardinals would be tied with the Giants for the last Wild Card spot, with the Brewers (winners of seven straight) and the Reds next up in the playoff chase. 

If those pursuits hold, it’s bad news for some underperforming contenders. The Braves (27-31) and Diamondbacks (28-31) have enough to overcome, and an October ticket going to someone other than the Mets, Dodgers, Cubs, Phillies, Giants or Padres is the very last thing they need. 

For what it’s worth, color me doubtful. Strength of schedule discourse usually doesn’t pick up until September, when there’s not much sample size left for probability to run its course in a sport as random as baseball, so let’s do it in June: The hardest remaining schedule in the National League belongs to Cincinnati, according to Tankathon. The third-hardest is Milwaukee’s. 

And no, there’s no contender in the No. 2 slot. That would be the Rockies, which makes sense, because they don’t get to play the Rockies.

Now, the tough part

The fourth-hardest? That would be the Phillies.

Just like the Monfort Brothers should be, Philadelphia is done with the Rockies. They’re halfway through the Pirates. Carrying a lot of weight in Tankathon’s SOS calculator is seven games against the Braves, who may mildly stink now — but probably don’t actually stink.

After the Brewers stomping, the Phillies are 13-15 against teams above .500. Just nine teams in baseball have a winning record against winning teams.

The Mets are one of them. They don’t face a particularly easy schedule the rest of the way, either, at seventh-toughest in the Senior Circuit. The difference: They’re 18-10 against teams above water. That’s the best such mark in baseball.