The Reds “Elimination Number” for the Central (aka the Cards’ Magic Number) is 16. That means any combination of 16 Reds losses or Cards wins ends (mathematical, not rational) hopes for the Division title.
The Elimination Number for the Wild Card is 18, with the Padres in the lead heading into tonight’s game. The Reds have 19 games remaining, while the Padres have 21.
This is actually better than I would have predicted. Still bad – the Reds still need to go about 14-5 or 15-4 to win the WC – something this team cannot do.
Padres are winning big tonight.
Maybe the Reds will go 19-0 the rest of the way.
I think the division is more realistic than the WC at this point. There are just too many teams in the WC race, and too many things have to go right. If one of those teams gets hot, it’s over. With the division, we just have to worry about one team that hasn’t played well in weeks. The BP postseason odds report (sub) agrees slightly, giving the Reds a 4.7% chance of the division and 4.4% for the WC.
What this season could have been, if the Reds would have had a functional bullpen? All I want for Christmas is a new bullpen.
True, none of this matters unless they seriously pick it up. From some reason, I remain hopeful. The starting pitching has been pretty decent, with Arroyo, Harang, and Lohse (kudos to Kriv on that pick-up). Even Milton hasn’t been terrible in his last few starts, and was excellent last time against San Diego. His start tomorrow against Chris Young is obviously going to be very important.
So *all* we need is for the hitting to come around. Obviously a big “if”. But Dunn and Freel have to snap out of it sometime, right? Hatteberg, EdE and Aurilia have been consistently solid, and Philips seems to be coming around lately. So who knows?