Phillies enter final day of MLB regular season on verge of unfathomable choke in playoff race

The Philadelphia Phillies might really be doing this. We don't mean that in a good way.

As MLB enters the final day of the regular season on Sunday, there is a single National League playoff spot up for grabs. In one corner is the 87-74 Phillies. In the other is the 86-75 Arizona Diamondbacks . The Phillies lead the D-backs by a single game, but Arizona has the tiebreaker.

That leaves a scenario where the Phillies clinch with either a win over the Tampa Bay Rays or a D-backs loss to the San Diego Padres . It's a narrow path to victory for Arizona, but it's an astonishing turn of events the club is alive at all.

With the divisions all but decided, the Phillies were tied with both the Chicago Cubs and San Diego Padres in the wild-card race at 87-70 with five games to play. The D-backs were dead in the water, trailing the trio by four games. Arizona could have been eliminated from playoff contention as early as Wednesday.

Here is how every game has gone since then for the D-backs:

And here is what the Phillies have done:

In summary, the Phillies have spent four straight days exactly one good day from clinching a playoff spot, which the Padres and Cubs both did Thursday. They have been outscored 23-3 in those four days.

To be fair, the Phillies have faced the No. 1 seeds in the NL (Brewers) and AL (Rays) in that span. Those are tough matchups, but that's also kind of the point of making the playoffs. The Phillies have needed only two of 10 games to go their way to clinch a playoff spot, and only one has, the Padres' win on Saturday.

Philadelphia has looked more listless with every game, right up to its blowout loss at the hands of Tampa . That was a game in which the Phillies maneuvered their rotation to start Aaron Nola on two days' rest, when they would want to be saving him for the playoffs. He pitched a single inning, allowing four hits and three runs.

The club will break even more glass due to emergency on Sunday, with Zack Wheeler taking the mound and Jesús Luzardo getting activated to be available out of the bullpen . That is full elimination-game mode, two days before a hypothetical playoff berth would begin.

Whomever gets the final wild card will face the Atlanta Braves in a best-of-three series starting Tuesday.

Even if Sunday goes the Phillies' way, they are still facing an ominous situation in a season that was supposed to be one of their best remaining chances with their current core. They rank fourth in MLB in payroll at $289 million for 2026 and are coming off back-to-back division titles with one of the oldest rosters in MLB.

Bryce Harper is in his age 33 season. Same with Kyle Schwarber and Trea Turner . Wheeler is 36. Cristopher Sánchez is 29. Nola is 33. That's not a group anyone can expect to get better with time, only worse, and there aren't many reasons for optimism coming from the minor-league ranks, not when the Philadelphia farm system was ranked only the 26th best in baseball by MLB Pipeline last month .

It's the kind of situation that leads to an uncomfortable offseason any time the team fails to win a World Series. Depending on how Sunday goes, Philadelphia could be in for several more degrees of uncomfortable this winter.