The St. Louis Cardinals are watching the playoff picture tighten around them after two straight losses to the San Francisco Giants pushed their margin for error even lower.
St. Louis fell 5-4 on Monday and then came back on Tuesday with a 2-1 defeat, leaving the club six games back in the National League playoff race. The Cardinals are now 72-74, and their elimination number has dropped to 10.
There were a couple of positives in the latest loss. Masyn Winn returned to the lineup, and Quinn Mathews gave St.
Louis six innings while allowing just two runs. But the bats never really got going, and that was enough to keep the Cardinals from trimming the gap.
The standings have also shifted around them. The Pittsburgh Pirates have moved ahead of St.
Louis, with the Cardinals now on the outside looking in along with the San Diego Padres and the Miami Marlins. If the season ended today, the Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs and Arizona Diamondbacks would be in the postseason field.
St. Louis and Miami are tied with elimination numbers of 10. Pittsburgh sits one game ahead with an elimination number of 11, while San Diego’s number is 16 with only a few weeks left in the regular season.
An elimination number tracks how close a team is to being mathematically out, based on its own losses and the wins of the teams it’s chasing. In this case, the Cardinals’ number applies to the Wild Card race, since they are already out of the National League Central picture.
The season has gone better than expected at times, especially in the first half, when St. Louis gave its fans real reason to believe.
But the second half has been a different story in the standings, and the Giants series offered a chance the Cardinals couldn’t cash in on. Now, with the losses piling up and the number shrinking, St.
Louis is running out of time to make a push.
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