With five straight wins, the Phillies have vaulted back to the top of MLB's overall standings with an 84-56 record. They're tied with the Dodgers but own the head-to-head tiebreaker on the strength of a 4-to-3 season series advantage.
The 1-seed carries great importance because it comes with home-field advantage throughout the National League playoffs, and since the best American League team is 3½ games back of the Phils and Dodgers, it will likely also mean home-field advantage in the World Series.
Even if they don't finish as the 1-seed, the Phillies have created three games of distance between themselves and the Brewers for the 2-seed, which is also crucial because the top two seeds in each league receive a bye in the wild-card round. Though the Phillies have made deep postseason runs two years in a row after playing in the wild-card round, their position players and pitchers could use the break this time.
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The Phils have a big series in Milwaukee Sept. 16-18. Any result other than a Brewers sweep and the Phillies win the head-to-head tiebreaker over them as well.
Phillies remaining schedule
Both the Phillies and Dodgers have 22 games left.
The Phils have:
Philadelphia Phillies
• 3 at Marlins
• 3 vs. Rays
• 3 vs. Mets
• 3 at Brewers
• 4 at Mets
• 3 final home games against the Cubs
• 3 final road games in D.C.
The seven games with the Mets will be tough because they have a ton to play for, tied with the Braves for the final NL wild-card spot. How the Phillies fare against the Mets will determine which second NL East team makes the playoffs.
The remaining six games against the Marlins and Nationals should not be difficult. Both teams are stripped down from even their below-average first-half rosters and are failing to score runs or hit for power.
The Rays are also a shell of the roster they opened the season with. They have the winning percentage of a 69-win team since the trade deadline and have dropped nine of the last 14.
The Cubs' offense has been red-hot with double-digit runs in six of the last 13 games, though who knows if that's still the case in three weeks when the teams meet at Citizens Bank Park. Their lineup also started the season like this before going into a two-month skid.
Dodgers remaining schedule
The rest of the road for the Dodgers includes:
• 3 vs. Guardians
• 3 vs. Cubs
• 4 at Braves
• 3 at Marlins
• 3 vs. Rockies
• 3 vs. Padres
• 3 at Rockies
The Dodgers' next 10 games — Cleveland, the Cubs, Atlanta — will be tough. The Guardians are fighting for the top seed in the AL, the Braves are clinging to their playoff lives and the Cubs are the only dark horse team that could potentially leapfrog the Braves and Mets for the final playoff spot.
But LA's final 12 games look pretty easy with nine against the Rockies and Marlins, two of the three worst teams in baseball.
If the Phillies trail the Dodgers by a game or two heading into that final two-week stretch, their chances of making up ground won't be great unless the Dodgers uncharacteristically stumble. They're human, and they lack starting pitching, but they also have a more complete lineup than they've had all year with Mookie Betts and Max Muncy healthy in addition to Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman, Will Smith and Teoscar Hernandez. Betts and Muncy missed all seven Phillies-Dodgers games this season.
The race could create an interesting dynamic where both the Phillies and Dodgers have their divisions secured with a week to go but are still jockeying for seeding. The Phils would ideally love to take things easy over the final week with their starting pitchers while also figuring out how to rest hitters without disrupting their timing. Balancing that with home-field advantage could be a big topic in this town by mid-September.