St. Louis Cardinals News: Cards could clinch playoffs today

There are at least two games left in the St. Louis Cardinals’ 2020 regular season schedule. On Saturday, the team could punch their ticket to the playoffs.

The St. Louis Cardinals are right in the middle of the most important series of the 2020 season. Through three games out of five against the Milwaukee Brewers, the Cards have two wins. So far, Dylan Carlson has played a huge part in the wins and you couldn’t really ask for much more.

With two games left though, the Cardinals and Brewers are both still fighting for a playoff spot. The Cardinals currently sit at 29-27 on the year and are tied with 30-28 Cincinnati Reds. The 28-30 Brewers are two games back of the Cardinals in the division, but could tie the Cards with two consecutive wins. Interestingly enough, the Reds have already clinched their postseason spot, but not the second spot in the division just yet.

A week ago, we set up the postseason picture focusing on the six teams gunning for four different spots.

With the Reds and the 30-28 Marlins clinching yesterday, the Cardinals, Brewers, Giants (29-29), and Phillies (28-30) are all fighting for the final two spots. Right now, the Cardinals just have to win today to clinch.

Just clinching a playoff spot will be a wonder in its own right given what the Cardinals have had to go through this year, but there is plenty of room to still clinch the second spot in the division.

The Cardinals are scheduled to hit 58 games played on Sunday. The two games that have been left out of the schedule were one of the series against the Detroit Tigers. The playoffs start on Wednesday for the NL, and having two days off before any potential sereis would be huge for the Cardinals.

The St. Louis Cardinals won’t be forced to play those games against the Tigers if they make the playoffs and have no chance of still winning the division. Because of this, the situation to not play a doubleheader Monday is a little tricky.

The Cubs are currently three games ahead of the Cards and if they lose the next two games and the Cardinals win the next two, the Cardinals will be just one game back and could tie the Cubs for the division lead if they won both games of the potential doubleheader Monday.

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Three of the first four seeds of the playoffs are already locked in. The Dodgers are the easy number one seed, then it’s the Braves at number two. The Cubs would be the third seed if they can hang on to their division lead. After that, the Padres are the fourth seed. After that, things are still fluid as the rest of the teams are so close together.

While the Cardinals locking in their seed would be nice, it is daunting to think about facing the San Diego Padres in just a three-game series.

The main thing here is that the St. Louis Cardinals are more or less a playoff lock at this point. They sit at 94.5% odds based on FanGraphs’ projections and that sounds about right.

After everything the Cardinals have had to endure this year, making the playoffs is a huge win. You can argue about how that’ll make the team act this winter, but I’m not in the business of being upset about making the playoffs. Say what you will about this team, they have just as much of a chance as anyone else if they just make it in, something that will hopefully happen today.