The Marlins chances at the Wild Card took a big hit this past weekend.
The way I see it: the Fish can only afford to lose one more game this season if they have any hopes of being the non-divisional winner in the NL playoffs.
Forget the red hot Phillies, the Marlins will face them six times before the end of the season. They can take that one into their own hands.
The problem lies out west and since the Dodgers are leading the Wild Card race, let's focus on them.
The Dodgers have 13 games remaining. And up to this point have played at a .523 win percentage. If there were to continue at that percentage for the rest of the season, they will win 6.799 of their remaining games.
Let's call it 7.
Since the Marlins are four back, they will need to win 11 of the last 13 games on the schedule to tie and 12 to win.
The Fish longest win streak of the year, up to this point, has been 9 games. They did it twice, first on June 10 to the 20th and again on August 20 to the 29th. Granted, assuming they can absorbed one more loss, they will only need to put together two six game win streaks with a loss sandwiched in the middle. But now we are just playing semantics.
What it comes down to is this: securing the Wild Card is definitely not looking like a favorable outcome. But who knows. This team has been all surprises all season long.
Still, I wouldn't bet the rent money on it.