Six games remain in the 2026 regular season.
All four teams still alive in the National League Wild Card race — the Cubs, Padres, Phillies and Diamondbacks — are off Monday. Thus they will begin Tuesday’s action with the same position and percentages noted in this article.
The Cubs and Padres are currently tied for the top Wild Card spot at 87-69, with the Cubs ahead because they own the tiebreaker with San Diego. The Phillies are one game back at 86-70 and the Diamondbacks are 82-74 and on the verge of elimination, four games behind the Phillies; their elimination number with the Cubs is 1, so the Cubs can clinch a Wild Card spot by defeating the Marlins Tuesday.
This is where it’s really fortunate that the Cubs have the tiebreaker over the Padres and Phillies. If all three teams wound up tied at the end of the regular season, the Cubs would get the first wild card spot. In that scenario they’d host the Phillies, because Philadelphia swept their season series 6-0 over San Diego. Here are all the various tiebreaker rules.
The article in The Athletic noting the odds and percentages for various postseason scenarios has been updated through Sunday’s games, so I thought today would be a good time to take a look at the various odds and chances.
First, here are the percentage odds for the possible postseason matchups for the first two rounds:
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As compared to the last post I made on this topic on Saturday, the chances for the Cubs to be the No. 4 seed (and top Wild Card) have increased from 40 percent to 60 percent. The Cubs still control their own destiny — win out and they’re the top Wild Card.
The Brewers are very likely to be the No. 1 National League seed. They currently lead the Dodgers by two games and hold the tiebreaker.
Now, here are the Cubs’ percentages of making the postseason and where they would wind up, based on each possible W/L record in the remaining six games:
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Aa you can see, the Cubs’ chances of being that No. 4 seed are better than 50 percent even if they go just 3-3 over the six games, and they increase to 99 percent if they can go at least 5-1.
The worst-case scenarios are going 1-5 or 0-6, which could dump them into the No. 6 position. But with the Marlins coming to town, that seems very unlikely. Miami is 31-47 on the road this year and so the Cubs ought to take at least two of three from them at Wrigley Field. Then the Cubs travel to Boston, where the Red Sox are likely going to be locked in to the second wild card spot in the American League before that series begins. Hopefully the Cubs can win at least one, maybe two, at Fenway Park.
That would leave the Cubs with either three or four wins, at minimum, this week and that’s even before considering what the other teams are doing. The Padres have to face the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium for a three-game series before finishing the season at home against the Diamondbacks. The Phillies are home, but face the teams with the best record in each league for a three-game series each, the Brewers and Rays. The Brewers still need to win to clinch home field throughout the postseason, and the Rays have a magic number of 2 to clinch the AL East. In any case, neither is a pushover for the Phillies.
So the Cubs have a pretty good chance of hosting a Wild Card series next week at Wrigley Field. And as always, we await developments.
