DENVER, CO - OCTOBER 2: Carlos Gonzalez #5 of the Colorado Rockies hugs Nolan Arenado #28 after the final game of the season at Coors Field on October 2, 2016 in Denver, Colorado. The Milwaukee Brewers defeated the Rockies 6-4. The Rockies finished their season 75-87. (Photo by Justin Edmonds/Getty Images) For the first time in franchise history, the Colorado Rockies have clinched a postseason berth in consecutive seasons. Following up on their National League Wild Card spot in 2017, this year’s incarnation has done at least that, clinching at worst a playoff spot and a Game 163 for the division with the Los Angeles Dodgers. However, just one win or Dodgers loss over the weekend will secure the division for the Colorado Rockies outright. For the Rockies, who have won eight straight — capped by tonight’s 5-2 win over Washington — in June, they had just a 3.6 percent chance to make the playoffs. The Rockies will be making their fifth appearance in the postseason, with the other instances happening in 1995, 2007, 2009, 2017 and now 2018. Like 2007, the Rockies have won a lot of games at the end to get to the dance … and let’s just say they don’t stop winning. The total could climb as high as 21 wins, which is how many the 2007 club won in 22 games to make their historical run toward Rocktober. That year (2007) is also the only time in franchise history that the team has won a playoff series. The eyes and hearts of the fans of purple will still be on the West though. The advantages of winning the West are two-fold. One, the Rockies would be guaranteed a series rather than just one game like last year. Two, the Rockies could play host rather than be on the road. 2018 will go down as one of the best years in franchise history not just for the playoffs but because the club has now won 90 games for just the third time. The Rockies have two more games with the Nationals and will begin playoff play either on Tuesday for the NL Wildcard game or Thursday for the NLCS, depending on what the Rockies themselves and the Dodgers do.<doc-sep>Note: This article will be continually updated to take into account game results each day, so continue to check it out and scroll to the bottom to see the latest matrix of outcomes / probabilities. The Colorado Rockies entered the final week of the 2017 season in control of the second Wild Card, but with the Milwaukee Brewers and St. Louis Cardinals right on their heels. In order to keep track of all possible scenarios that would lead them to clinch the Wild Card spot, I wrote an article that showed all possible outcomes and how their probabilities changed until the Rockies finally clinched on the final Saturday of the season. We now find ourselves in the final week of the 2018 season, and somewhat remarkably, it is again the case that things are coming down to the wire for the postseason chances for the Colorado Rockies (85-70) as they battle it out with the St. Louis Cardinals (87-69) and Los Angeles Dodgers (87-69). But this year, things are a bit more complicated than in 2017, namely because the NL West is still simultaneously in play along with the NL Wild Card. So in reprising my article from last year I had to find a way to expand my original matrix to track dual outcomes for various NL West and NL Wild Card combos (and ties! ). Before we get to the matrix, I want to explain an important simplifying assumption I had to make in order to make the sample space manageable: I am not going to include the Milwaukee Brewers (89-67) or Chicago Cubs (91-64) in my analysis since I will be assuming (for now) that they both will make the playoffs without issue. Given that both teams have at least a 99% chance of making the playoffs according to FiveThirtyEight, that hopefully shouldn’t be too controversial, but just to cover all my bases I’ll explain the scenarios where this assumption would break down. The Cubs are in an extremely good position to make the playoffs at 4.5 games ahead of the Cardinals and Dodgers and 6 games ahead of the Rockies, so the only way they would not make the playoffs outright would be if they went 1-6 or worse while the Rockies and Dodgers both simultaneously went 7-0 and 5-1. Given that the Cubs play 4 games against the Pittsburgh Pirates this week, the chance of this happening is so absurdly low it’s not worth considering. The Brewers are also in a very good position to make the playoffs at 2 games ahead of the Cardinals and Dodgers and 3.5 games ahead of the Rockies, but their situation is a bit more precarious because they are playing the Cardinals on the road. Namely, if the Brewers are swept by the Cardinals this week (unlikely but possible), suddenly the Brewers could become in danger of missing the playoffs entirely and it would come down to their performance in their final series against the Detroit Tigers and how well the Rockies play. So although I didn’t include the Brewers in the analysis at this stage, I will certainly have to add them in my mid-week updates if they do start losing. For now, I’m thinking of them as basically being guaranteed to win at least 3 games (which isn’t hard to imagine given they play 3 games at home against the Tigers), which makes them unlikely to be the team the Rockies would oust from making the postseason (as they’d have to win out to tie them). So now that we’ve taken care of the caveats, we are ready to discuss how to build the matrix to track which of the Dodgers and Rockies will win the NL West and then which of that other team and the Cardinals will win the NL Wild Card for every possible record that the three teams can have over the final week. Since each cell needs to encode both an NL West winner and an NL Wild Card winner, I have used a vertical bar where the left-hand side is who would win the NL West in the given scenario and the right-hand side is who would win the second NL Wild Card. In the case of ties, I used a hyphen for the tying teams. Since each cell is containing these multiple possibilities, to aid in the visualization I have also used a nifty gradient effect to show the winners. (With only two-color gradients at my disposal it was a bit of a struggle to capture the tying. scenarios, but I did my best...) Here are the 10 scenarios and their descriptions: I understand that this is a lot to take in, so the first thing I want you to note is that of these 10 possible scenarios, only the top one (“LAD | STL”) is very bad news for the Rockies. Every other scenario in this chart means that the Rockies would play beyond Game 162 in either a tie-breaker or make the playoffs outright, so keep that in mind when looking through the rest of the article. Note also the various tying scenarios for the NL West come in three flavors depending on the Cardinals’ record: If the Cardinals have a better record than the NL West tie, then you get the “COL-LAD | STL” option which means the loser of the Rockies @ Dodgers Game 163 would miss the playoffs entirely. If the Cardinals have a worse record than the NL West tie, we have the “COL - LAD” scenario and the Cardinals would be eliminated outright, and the loser of the Rockies @ Dodgers Game 163 would be the WC winner. Finally, if the Cardinals have the same record as the NL West tie, then we would get the zany three-way tie scenario “COL-LAD-STL” where the loser of the Rockies @ Dodgers Game 163 would go to St. Louis to play Game 164 that would decide the WC winner. The last thing I will note is the final option “LAD | STL & COL” – the only time I include the Brewers in this analysis, thereby breaking my own assumption. However, this scenario was necessary because it would be what occurs in the crazy situation where we go 7-0, but the Cardinals go 6-0 and the Dodgers go 6-0 (i.e. the bottom-right-most square in the matrix below). If this were to happen, the Cardinals going 6-0 would guarantee the Brewers go at best 3-3 and finish with at most 92 wins, ensuring the Rockies would at least tie the Brewers for another WC spot even though they never caught the Dodgers or Cardinals. So this scenario shows us the Rockies do still completely control their own destiny – even if the worst possible outcome (Dodgers 6-0 and Cardinals 6-0) were to occur, they can still make the playoffs by winning all of their own games. Of course, none of this is at all likely to happen, but hey, there is something comforting about not actually needing to rely on anyone losing to make the playoffs. Now that we have all the scenarios down, we are ready to construct the full matrix showing when each scenario would arrive for a given record combination of the Dodgers, Rockies and Cardinals. Unlike in 2017, none of the three teams are playing each other so there are 392 (8 * 7 * 7) record combos possible, and that is how many cells are in the matrix below. One thing misleading about trying to use the matrix in this form to determine how likely various scenarios are is that not all cells are equally probable to occur – records like 7-0 are much harder to have than records like 4-3, so fringe results are over-represented. Therefore, the best way to contextualize these outcomes is to compute the joint probability of every cell, which means finding the probability that each team ends up with every possible record combination. Using game probabilities from FiveThirtyEight, I simulated each of the 3 teams’ records over the final week 1 million times and computed the joint probabilities, which I put inside the cells of the matrix below, and included the marginal probabilities for each row and column on the sides of the matrix. Then, I rolled these joint probabilities up to compute the chance that each of the color-coded scenarios would occur and included that in the table on the upper right. Finally, taking any tiebreaker games as 50-50 coin flips, I also computed the probability of various “COL Results” to give the final probability of the Rockies making the playoffs and winning the division when all is said and done. Note that my results agree with FiveThirtyEight (as they should since I used their game probabilities) in giving the Rockies a 21% chance of winning the NL West and an 39% chance of making the playoffs. But there are some more interesting takeaways from the scenario breakdown - note that there is only a 50% chance that our season ends after Game 162, and there is nearly a 30% chance that we are involved in some type of tiebreaker, including a 4% chance of the three-way tie. Finally I derived what I find to be the most useful output: the conditional probabilities of the various scenarios and COL results given the Rockies records over the final week. Because at the end of the day that’s kind of what we’re all wondering – if the Rockies go 4-3 or 5-2 is that likely to be good enough? Or do they need to go 6-1 or 7-0? As the table above shows (and as one would expect), a record of 3-4 or worse is bad news for our playoff chances, although 3-4 is still not quite as bad as I’d expect, since we’d still have a 15% chance of playing in at least a tie-breaker. At 4-3, we’d have a worse chance than our chance right now (that shows that the game probs are bullish on the Rockies winning slightly more than 4 games on average), so 5-2 is where things start to get very interesting. At 5-2 we’d have an 83% chance of controlling our own destiny and playing at least a tiebreaker, and we would interestingly have roughly equal chances (33%) of winning the NL West, winning the NL Wild Card and missing the playoffs. At 6-1, we would be in a very good situation – 64% chance to win the NL West, and a 98% chance to control our own destiny, and that last figure is actually low given that I’m not including chances that the Brewers lose more than 3 games (which would be likely if the Cardinals went 5-1), so in some of those 2.25% “LAD | STL” situations we actually tie or pass the Brewers and still make the playoffs. At 7-0, as mentioned earlier we have a 100% chance of controlling our own destiny, and an 88% chance of winning the NL West. So: the ultimate conclusion: At 5-2 we have a good shot to play beyond Game 162 and if we can do better than that, we should expect Rocktober. As the games come in this week, I will update this article with the new matrices to show how the probabilities change so be sure to keep checking back here throughout the week! UPDATE: Sunday Morning, Sept 30 Rockies: (5-1); Dodgers (3-2); Cardinals: (1-4) On Saturday, the Rockies finally had a bad day for the first time in over a week as the Dodgers beat the Giants 10-6 and the Rockies got destroyed by the Nationals 12-2. The Cardinals also won, something that is inconsequential for our purposes as the Dodgers win eliminated them (although that win did impact the NL Central race). Even though they no longer matter, I will still include them in the main matrix for consistency’s sake. The Rockies and Dodgers are now tied on the final day of the season, and there’s now a little over a 50% chance that we play the NL West tiebreaker game in LA on Monday.<doc-sep>
The 2018 MLB regular season ends Sunday, meaning the postseason is now less than a week away. There are still plenty of postseason races that have to be decided between now and then. With that in mind, here is an update on the current postseason picture. Here is the SportsLine Projection System and here are the current postseason fields. If the season ended today ... AL Wild Card Game : Athletics at Yankees : Athletics at Yankees ALDS : Wild Card Game winner at Red Sox : Wild Card Game winner at Red Sox ALDS : Indians at Astros : Indians at Astros NL Wild Card Game : Cardinals at Brewers : Cardinals at Brewers NLDS : Wild Card Game winner at Cubs : Wild Card Game winner at Cubs NLDS: Dodgers at Braves Make sure to check out SportsLine's daily pick sheet for insight about every game. Mike Meredith/CBS Sports AL East champ: Red Sox (106-51) Games remaining: 5 (5 Home, 0 Away) 5 (5 Home, 0 Away) Remaining opponent's winning percentage: .484 .484 SportsLine's pennant odds: 32.63 percent 32.63 percent SportsLine's World Series odds: 17.99 percent The Red Sox have already clinched the AL East title, and, with a win on Monday, clinched the best record in baseball and thus home-field advantage throughout the postseason. The final week of the regular season will be stress-free in Boston. AL Central champ: Indians (88-68) Games remaining: 6 (0 Home, 6 Away) 6 (0 Home, 6 Away) Remaining opponent's winning percentage: .376 .376 SportsLine's pennant odds: 22.68 percent 22.68 percent SportsLine's World Series odds: 10.52 percent The Indians already clinched the AL Central title, and they've also clinched a worse record than the AL West winner, so they know they'll be the road team in the ALDS against Houston or Oakland. Cleveland is locked into its postseason spot. The only thing left to do now is pick up for wins in hopes of getting home-field advantage in the World Series. AL West leader: Astros (99-57) Games remaining: 6 (0 Home, 6 Away) 6 (0 Home, 6 Away) Remaining opponent's winning percentage: .377 .377 SportsLine's pennant odds: 13.24 percent 13.24 percent SportsLine's World Series odds: 7.52 percent The Astros have not yet clinched the AL West title, but they have a five-game lead in the loss column with six games remaining, so their magic number is two. Houston has already clinched a postseason spot, so it knows that, at worst, it will be the second wild-card team. Also, the Astros are two wins away from becoming the first team with back-to-back 100-win seasons since the 2004-05 Cardinals, and that is pretty darn cool. AL wild card leader: Yankees (96-60) Games remaining: 6 (0 Home, 6 Away) 6 (0 Home, 6 Away) Remaining opponent's winning percentage: .626 .626 SportsLine's pennant odds: 13.24 percent 13.24 percent SportsLine's World Series odds: 7.52 percent The Yankees have already clinched a postseason spot and they are now trying to lock up home-field advantage in the Wild Card Game. Because they hold the tiebreaker over the A's -- they split the season series 3-3, so now the tiebreaker is intradivision record, and the Yankees are 40-30 against the AL East while the Athletics are 36-35 against the AL West -- the magic number to clinch the top wild-card spot is four. The Yankees have a brutal schedule this week (three at Rays and three at Red Sox), so clinching home-field advantage in the Wild Card Game won't be easy. AL wild card runner-up: Athletics (95-62) Games remaining: 5 (0 Home, 5 Away) 5 (0 Home, 5 Away) Remaining opponent's winning percentage: .509 .509 SportsLine's pennant odds: 6.24 percent 6.24 percent SportsLine's World Series odds: 2.37 percent The A's clinched a playoff spot on Monday, meaning they'll be in the Wild Card Game at absolute worst. It's just likely that they'll be the visitor in that game as the Athletics are two behind the Yankees in the loss column for home-field advantage (though they are effectively three games back because New York holds the tiebreaker). Still, a postseason spot is a postseason spot, right? NL East champ: Braves (88-68) Games remaining: 6 (0 Home, 6 Away) 6 (0 Home, 6 Away) Remaining opponent's winning percentage: .502 .502 SportsLine's pennant odds: 10.92 percent 10.92 percent SportsLine's World Series odds: 3.52 percent The Braves have already clinched their first division title since 2013, so now all that's left is trying to clinch home-field advantage in the NLDS.