The NL Wild Card race has gotten extremely interesting

Don't look now but it's suddenly not such a sure thing that the Braves will be the top dogs in this year's Wild Card race.

Late last month, I used this space to talk about a few storylines to keep an eye on for the second half of the 2024 Major League Baseball season. One of the main things I discussed was the Wild Card race for both leagues and how it was still wide open — especially in the National League, where the entire Postseason picture included 12 of the 15 teams.

It’s been a few weeks since then and while you could argue that that number has gone down from 12 to 10 since both the Cubs and the Reds didn’t exactly come out of the gates swinging in the second half, things have tightened up considerably otherwise. Most of the excitement has come from the top of the NL Wild Card race getting very interesting all of a sudden.

If you had told most Atlanta Braves fans during Spring Training that their team would have been drawn into a dogfight for the Wild Card, they probably would’ve responded with “You mean the division, right?” Indeed, while the Braves were a solid pick to win the NL East once again this season, it would’ve been reasonable to believe that the Phillies could have given Atlanta a serious run for their money when it came to the divisional crown. While the Phillies have indeed slowed down from the furious pace that they were on to start the season, they’re still pretty big favorites at this point to end Atlanta’s run of divisional dominance and win their first divisional crown since 2011.

However, the Braves now have bigger problems to worry about besides simply making a run to retain the divisional crown. Atlanta is now in a fight to simply make the Postseason. The gap between themselves and the NL Wild Card pack has shrunken to the point where they’ve gone from having a comfortable lead and an 84 percent shot at clinching a Wild Card spot (according to FanGraphs) on July 11 to suddenly having their chances go down nearly 20 points to 67 percent. They enter Monday just one percentage point ahead of the San Diego Padres for the first Wild Card spot and only half a game ahead of the Arizona Diamondbacks for the last. They are just 1.5 games ahead of the New York Mets who are currently on the outside looking in.

In fact, the Mets even passed the Braves in the standings at one point after the break before falling behind nearly as quickly. However, it’s become clear that the Braves are likely going to have a major fight on their hands to hold onto the top Wild Card spot and may also be in a fight to simply make the Postseason. So, what happened? How has this race gone from being nearly a sure thing in Atlanta’s favor to suddenly being a free-for-all where even the Pittsburgh Pirates and the St. Louis Cardinals are just one good stretch of baseball away from having a serious shot, themselves?

For the Braves, it's come down to two major issues: Injuries and a lack of consistent offensive production. For all the injury luck that the Braves have had in recent seasons, they've had none of it here in 2024. For reference's sake, here's Atlanta's lineup from Opening Day:

Now, here's how the Braves looked four months later:

Needless to say, it would've been miraculous for any team to maintain their lofty expectations with that much lineup turnover in any given season. As such, it's pretty easy to understand why and how an offense that was one of the best to ever do it (in the regular season, at least) last season has suddenly become a group that is hitting .239/.303/.406 with just 97 wRC+. The Braves are extremely fortunate that their pitching has been great this season because the offense has been middling at best and is the only real thing keeping them from falling completely into the pack instead of still being at the head for the time being. Atlanta's been hovering around 9-10 games over .500 since May. Being 20-9 looks great in May! However, being 60-51, six games behind in the division and in a cage fight for a Wild Card spot isn't great for a team that had the expectations that Atlanta had!

Atlanta's continued sputtering has coincided with the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks waking up. In fact, with both San Diego and Arizona going 8-2 over their last 10 games, they haven't just fully established themselves in the Wild Card conversation but they've also made things a little interesting the NL West race as the Los Angeles Dodgers have started slowing down, themselves. While both the Padres and D-Backs are still very much outsiders for the division, they have absolutely played themselves into contention.

A.J. Preller's deadline dealings were extremely risky, as San Diego’s head baseball honcho decided to essentially empty the farm out in order to boost their bullpen. They are 100 percent all in at this point and they’re playing like it as well. The Padres are the hottest team in baseball since the break (11-3), they’ve won five straight series and appear to be firing on all cylinders right now. Manager Mike Shildt is pushing all the right buttons and he’s been doing a very solid job of utilizing the improved bullpen in order to shorten the games.

With a bullpen already full of fearsome arms like Robert Suarez and Jeremiah Estrada and the additions of July NL Reliever of the Month Tanner Scott, Jason Adam, and Bryan Hoeing, this is not a team that you want to fall behind against after six innings. With their high-powered offense (sporting the 6th-best team wRC+ in baseball), they're also a team that nobody would want to see in October if they can continue this pace and lock down a Postseason berth.

The same goes for the Diamondbacks, who have finally hit their stride after spending most of this season struggling — it's almost as if they're the defending National League Champions, right? Arizona has overcome injury issues of their own and have been slowly-but-surely clawing their way back into the playoff conversation. Arizona's offense is just as high-powered as San Diego's (they have the 7th-best team wRC+ in MLB and are just one point behind San Diego in that regard) and it sure helps when you have Corbin Carroll appearing to wake up as guys like NL MVP candidate Ketel Marte, Christian Walker and Joc Pederson have been mashing all season. You know things are going well when you're able to start a game like this:

Meanwhile on the outside looking in at the Wild Card spots, the New York Mets are still hanging around. They've definitely slowed down since the brief-but-magical run with Grimace but they're only 1.5 games out of a Wild Card spot, so they can't be counted out by any means. The Pittsburgh Pirates aren't exactly the picture of consistency but they're hanging right on in there at a game over .500 and we're seeing right now whether or not they'll be serious contenders after having just seen the Diamondbacks and are set to start playing the Padres on Tuesday. The St. Louis Cardinals are hoping that getting at least part of the ol’ band back together can revive some of that old devil magic that we all remember and even the San Francisco Giants still have a little bit of life left after Blake Snell's no-hitter over the weekend.

There's still plenty left to play for for the majority of teams in the National League. The NL Wild Card race figures to be particularly fascinating — we figured it would be as such once baseball returned from the break and so far this race has lived up to the billing. Any hot streak or slump from any of these aforementioned teams could have a huge impact on the Postseason race and it's clear that things are still very much up in the air as we get into the business end of this season.