The Philadelphia Phillies enter Monday with a seven-game lead in the NL East over both the New York Mets and Atlanta Braves. Only 19 games remain and the Phillies' magic number over both clubs is 13.
Basically, it's incredibly likely that the Phillies win the NL East. SportsLine gives them a 95.7% chance, for example, and has them winning this division by seven games. Still, after dropping two games to the last-place Marlins over the weekend, Phillies star and leader Bryce Harper isn't letting anyone believe the race is over.
"This division ain't close to being done," he said (via NBC Sports Philadelphia). "Obviously, there's two great teams behind us and we're gonna play the Mets, obviously, a couple times, and we gotta keep rolling."
It's certainly the correct mindset to have in the clubhouse. The players should believe they have to keep stacking wins in order to secure the division title and they can't believe it's over until it's over.
From the outside, however, we can look at reality and say that it would take an epic and historic meltdown for the Phillies to not win the division.
The big item of note, though, is where Harper mentioned they play the Mets a "couple" times. To be specific, there are seven games left between the NL East foes. If you wanted to be extremely optimistic from the Mets' point of view -- or pessimistic on the Phillies' end -- you could say the Mets sweep those seven games and the division is tied. That's reason alone for the Phillies to worry about taking care of their own business until the division is officially clinched.
Keep in mind, as well, that if that happened, the Braves would have a very good chance to get right in the mix as well, making it a three-team race. The Mets visit the Braves for three games the last week of the season, too, so it's possible things get crazy.
It just isn't really plausible, because that is an extreme result to consider. More likely is the Braves and Mets duking it out for either the final wild-card spot or taking two of the berths while kicking either the Padres or Diamondbacks out (for more on that race, Dayn Perry did an excellent breakdown).
To reiterate, the NL East certainly merits watching here in these final weeks of the season, but the most likely scenario is we're watching for wild-card implications while the Phillies take care of business and clinch the division for the first time since 2011.
