The Crawfish Boxes

The only thing that didn't go the Astros way last night was that St. Louis managed to eek out a victory over the Cubs, 4-3.  Otherwise, the baseball gods were really working their magic for the Astros.  After falling behind 2-0 nothing, the Astros went on an offensive tear that was enabled by some laughable defense from the Pittsburgh Pirates.  The Marlins managed to tear the cover off the ball initially and then manage to not let the Phillies come back and held out to win 10-8.  Finally, the reason that everyone in the Astros clubhouse should all be pitching in money to buy a refrigerated crate of Cristal: the Reds.  Who almost lost the game on the strength of a Ray Durham 3-run shot in the 7th.  It went into extra innings and in the 11th, after issuing a free pass to Votto, Seth McLung gave up a RBI single to Brandon Phillips, who had just had a ball ricochet off of his hand.  Cordero held on for the save.  After a night full of nothing but good -- just about -- here are your NL Wild Card Standings:

What seemed impossible a month ago and seemed just a little too improbable a week ago, now looks doable.  Still 14 back in the elimination column, we have a scant four game gap to make up over our final 17.  The leap frogging contest got a lot easier for us last night, too.  1/2 a game and 1 game; gaps which could easily be closed after tonight's action.

What do the odds have for this morning?

The play off odds have gotten markedly better across the board, simple as that.  I've decided to nix the BPro PECOTA Adjusted odds, because at this point the guys they have on the field aren't the ones that PECOTA is adjusting.  Some of you may note the addition of Sports Club Stats 50/50 and Weighted to the club today.  While the percentages aren't the far off from Cool Standings and BPro's unadjusted odds, I like the two different ways that they run the simulations.  Also, you can look at some sweet graphs like this one:

Those are our probabilities, day by day, of making the post-season throughout the season.  Can anyone spot the month of May on the graph?

Here's a quick look at all of our opponents in the Wild Card race's match-ups:

What everyone needs to pray to the baseball gods for today is:

1. CC Sabathia shows he's human and has an off day.
2. Brett Myers reverts back to early season form and gets shelled.
3. Braden Looper...you don't need to wish/pray for anything, Lilly vs. Looper should take care of itself.