Mets-Braves NL East title implications

The Mets and Braves are playing a head-to-head series in Atlanta this weekend. The winner of the series will get a bye in the Wild Card round and the right to skip the NLDS. This is the first year of this new format. It's worth working through what all this means. This year's Wildcard is best-of-three at the home field of higher seed.

There are six teams in the playoffs. Dodgers will be the top seed, Cardinals will get third seed and the Padres will probably be fifth seed. The winner of the Mets/Braves race is locked into the second seed while the loser will go to the fourth seed as a Wild Card.

The Mets and Braves are the No. 2 and No 4 seeds in the NL East respectively. They have to wait for the winner of the divisional series between the Phillies and Brewers. If they get past the Wild Card round, they will play the Dodgers in an NLDS.

The odds are against all the playoff teams. There are 12 teams in the postseason under the new format. The top seeds have a 12.5% chance to win it all, while the lower seeds each have 6.25%. The best four teams get a bye and the other four get to skip the Wild Card round. The Yankees, Astros, Dodgers and Yankees have already earned that bye. All the likely Wild card teams are around that 6%. It's the difference between having a 6% shot and a 12% of World Series odds.

The Mets and Braves are evenly matched in talent. The division title is at stake. There are positives and negatives to the Mets-Braves series. The positives are obvious. They are the team's talent and the fact that they are playing each other in the same division.

The current playoff bracket has four Wild Card teams at home before the Astros, Yankees, Dodgers and Mets/Braves division champion. The Wildcard teams have a 45% chance of their season ending next weekend.

The NLDS starts on Tuesday, 11 October. The Wild Card team has to use its top three starters on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. If the team is the Mets, it's the difference between starting Jacob deGrom and Max Scherzer in the first two games of the NL playoffs and Chris Bassitt and either Taijuan Walker or Carlos Carrasco. It's not clear who the Braves will start.

The winner of the 4 vs 5 series goes directly to Los Angeles. If you're the #4 seed and you beat the Padres, you get to go to LA. The Dodgers are a very good team, but they're not a team you want to play right away. If the team is the second seed, it's better to avoid playing them than to get knocked off in a best-of-5 NLDS.

You can see why you'd like to have the time off. On the other hand, what about if you win the Wild Card?

The 2019 World Series is less of a coin flip than it used to be. It's more than one game. The Royals won the 2014 AL Wild Card game, and the Brewers blew a 3-1 lead in the 2019 NL Championship Game.

The Mets and Braves are playing for the NL East title this weekend. The Mets have a 16% chance to win the division, while the Braves have 9%. The bye is worth about 6 percentage points of championship odds. The long layoff problem is also a problem. Both teams are going all-out to get the bye. It's more important than winning the game. They are both going to try to do that this week.