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Mar 27, 2025; St. Louis, Missouri, USA; A general view of Busch Stadium during the fifth inning of opening day between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Minnesota Twins. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-Imagn Images Jeff Curry-Imagn Images

Diamondbacks, Cardinals, and National League Playoff Odds Review

Originally posted on Arizona Diamondbacks on SI
By Jack Sommers | Last updated May 23, 2025 2:14 PM ET

The Arizona Diamondbacks came into the 2025 season with the expectation upon themselves to make the Postseason. Having missed by just one game in 2024, despite improving their regular season win total to 89, the team set about making significant investments in the payroll.

Corbin Burnes was signed to a six-year, $210 million deal. Contract extensions were signed with Geraldo Perdomo, Brandon Pfaadt, and Justin Martinez. They traded for third year arbitration eligible Josh Naylor to replace Christian Walker. In total the payroll is projected to reach $195 million this year, well beyond last year's franchise record $181 million.

The Diamondbacks organization were not the only ones who expected this team to reach the playoffs. For example FanGraphs pegged their chances at 60.4%. which was fifth-highest in the NL. Baseball-Reference opened the season with Arizona even higher at 65%.

Eight weeks into the season the D-backs are 26-24, and sit in fourth place in the NL West, five games behind the first place Dodgers. They also trail the Giants by three games and the Padres by two. This weekend's opponent, the St. Louis Cardinals, sit between Arizona and third Wild Card seed San Diego.

The mediocre start for Arizona has dropped their playoff odds to just slightly above 50%, or basically a coin flip. Their ranking has dropped from fifth to seventh. While not a disaster by any means, these odd and rankings mirror the overall sense of uncertainty with where the club is headed.

The table below shows the playoff odds from Baseball Reference, FanGraphs, and Baseball Prospectus (Pecota Standings).

FanGraphs and Pecota Standings are based on thousands of simulations run off of their rest of season projections. That is then added to current record to come up with a final, end-of-season projection. Baseball-Reference playoff odds are based on run differential and strength of schedule over a team's last 100 regular season games, as well as their strength of schedule going forward.

Since the last 100 games for most teams is split evenly between 2024-2025, I've made the editorial decision to discount their playoff odds by 50%.

Jack Sommers

Lines are drawn to represent tiers. The three division leaders — Dodgers, Cubs and Phillies, along with the Mets are all considered strong favorites to make the Postseason.

The Braves are the biggest beneficiary of using the weighted average, as their chances are a full nine percentage points higher once the Baseball Reference discount kicks in. The projections systems seem to not trust the Padres' depth and expect a good deal of regression to the mean with their pitching staff.

The Giants feel like they deserve their ranking in both the standings and in the odds reports as a legitimate Wild Card contender.

The most curious result in this table is how slow all of the projections systems have been to buy into the Cardinals. They recently had a nine-game winning streak, and with a +40 run differential, they also have a 29-21 expected win-loss record, two games better than their actual.

The fact that Baseball-Reference has over a 36% chance for St. Louis compared to 29% for FanGraphs and just 14% from Pecota is significant. The projections based playoff odds seem to be lagging on this team.

They're getting good pitching in both the rotation and in their bullpen, and their offense has had a balanced attack, coupled with good defense from their position players. On the other hand they could be primed for some regression to the mean, if they are, as the projections suggestion, playing over their heads.

A failure on the part of the Diamondbacks to win this series will not only result in them falling further behind in the standings in the short term, but could begin to dampen their longer term outlook to a concerning degree. A series victory over St. Louis on the road in Busch Stadium, where they are 32-56 all time, may seem like a lot to ask at the moment. But if they can pull it off it would go a long way towards reversing the D-backs negative trend and reinforce the idea that St. Louis is a pretender.

This article first appeared on Arizona Diamondbacks on SI and was syndicated with permission.

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