Wild Card standings: A’s still 3 games out, with 16 to play

The Oakland A’s 2021 postseason hopes continued to dwindle this week, but they’re not down to zero yet.

The A’s went on the road and took two of three games from the Kansas City Royals, but that was only enough to hold steady in a race in which they trail. With time running out, they need to be gaining ground, not treading water, and it especially hurt that the one loss at Kauffman Stadium featured a blown six-run lead.

The two clubs combined for 48 runs and 75 hits during their ridiculous series together, an average of eight runs and 12 hits per team per game.

• Game #144: A’s blow 6-run lead, again
• Game #145: A’s barely hold on for wild 12-10 win over Royals
• Game #146: A’s take advantage of Royals mistakes in 7-2 win

There are five teams competing for two AL Wild Card spots. Since our last look on Monday, the standings entering Friday are identical except that the Mariners moved down by one game.

Oakland trails the Second Wild Card spot by three games, but really they’re only back by two in the loss column. However, the presence of a third team above them complicates any path to grabbing that final playoff spot, and now they’ve only got 16 games left to make a move.

The A’s travel to Anaheim next to play the sub-.500 Los Angeles Angels from Friday through Sunday, offering another chance to bank some wins against a non-contender. Unfortunately, everybody else is playing even weaker opponents this weekend:

• TOR vs. MIN
• BOS vs. BAL
• NYY vs. CLE
• OAK @ LAA
• SEA @ KCR

The postseason odds were in the 5-10% range a few days ago, but now they’ve dropped even lower. Oakland trails the Astros by seven games in the AL West division.

• FanGraphs: 4.1% (split 3.5% Wild Card, less than 1% division)
• FiveThirtyEight: 5% (split mostly Wild Card, less than 1% division)
• Baseball-Reference: 7.8% (split 6.4% Wild Card, 1.4% division)

It’s looking worse than ever. But it ain’t over till it’s over.