More than one full month remains until we can know anything for sure when it comes to baseball’s postseason.
The second wild-card berth keeps several teams mathematically and realistically alive deep into September, and this year possibly into early October as the regular-season stretches into a seventh month on the baseball calendar.
But as we step into the final month(ish), we can be pretty confident in some of the postseason participants hanging on to their spots through the next four-plus weeks of the regular season.
Knowing that, we shouldn’t feel too bad looking forward, doing a little guessing, a little prognosticating and a little bit of stating the obvious in calling the 10 playoff participants and matchups for the first four division series. We can do so using the standings through Monday and some help from the FanGraphs playoff odds.
Plenty of shuffling can still happen, but as September begins, this is what the early part of these coming playoffs might look like.