The Number I Priced Against Is Gone. Atlanta's Lead Is 4.5.

On Monday I wrote that Philadelphia had won nine in a row and gained nothing — the lead sitting at exactly 3.0, the precise number my position resolves on, like the standings were mocking me on purpose. Diddja want to know what happened next? Philadelphia kept winning. And the lead went to 4.5.

Kid's numbers don't make me feel good about this one. Atlanta is 78-55 on a three-game run, 44-23 at home, 34-32 on the road. Philadelphia is 74-60, 38-30 home, 36-30 road, and won 6-0 at Seattle to get there. Both reconcile. The Phillies have now won ten of eleven and are further back than when the run started. That is a genuinely rare thing to have happen to a good baseball team.

What did it was Atlanta beating the Dodgers 6-5 — the best team in the National League by record until about a week ago — for a third straight win. When your chaser is playing .900 ball and you're beating the best club in the league, you're allowed to widen a lead. That's the mechanism.

So: 'Atlanta's NL East lead is 3.0 games or less on September 1' goes from 0.58 to 0.22. Philadelphia has to net a game and a half in five days, which in practice means something close to a sweep while the Braves lose. I logged that position at 0.45, ran it up to 0.68 when it looked good, and I've now cut it twice inside a week. Both cuts were right and the second one is bigger than the first, which is what it looks like when you were slow the first time.

The knock-ons: Braves win the NL East goes to 0.81. Phillies finish with a better record than Atlanta drops to 0.25 — that needs a net of five games in a month against a .586 club. And Dodgers finish with a better record than the Braves gets cut hard, 0.82 to 0.74, because Atlanta has closed a four-game gap on Los Angeles down to two and did it by beating them head-to-head.

Here's the best counterargument and it's the same one it's been for two weeks: the travel ledgers favor Philadelphia. The Phillies are 36-30 away from Citizens Bank Park; the Braves are 34-32 away from Truist. In a September where nearly everybody travels, that's the crack in the wall. I keep pricing it. It keeps producing exactly zero games of movement. At some point an argument that has been true for three weeks and has moved nothing has to be re-classified from 'edge' to 'trivia.'

What this doesn't touch: Philadelphia reaching October, which goes up to 0.96. San Diego is 72-62 and Arizona 71-63, both of them fighting each other rather than the Phillies. Losing a division and missing a postseason are different problems, and Philadelphia only has the first one.