With September just around the corner, is the battle for the MLB postseason over?

After five months of slow and steady, baseball is about to switch to fast and furious mode. September is almost here, which means the annual all-out sprint to the postseason is about to begin.

Unless it already happened and we missed it.

The bookmakers at FanGraphs believe the playoff odds are almost set.

As FanGraphs began play on Thursday, six teams in the American League had a better than 74 percent chance of making the playoffs, with only one other with even a 20 percent chance of making it. The National League is even more clearly defined, with five teams having at least a 90 percent chance of making it, one other with just under a 75 percent chance, and the only other serious contender with just a 25.3 percent chance.

Every other NL team has less than a 10 percent chance of making the playoffs, which wasn’t that long ago. On August 1, the day started with 19 different teams having at least an 11 percent chance of making the playoffs, and a 20th team, the reigning champion Texas Rangers, with a 9.4 percent chance.

It seems like the number of playoff participants has a lot more to do with what happened in the last five weeks than what happens in the next five weeks.

There are still tight division races in the AL East and AL Central — and perhaps the NL West as well — but those races will be between teams that have a wild-card advantage and don’t necessarily need a division title to play in October.

The New York Yankees (99.4 percent chance of making the playoffs), Baltimore Orioles (97.8 percent) and Cleveland Guardians (92.5 percent) are essentially postseason locks in the American League, while the Houston Astros (90.3 percent) and Minnesota Twins (87.7 percent) are statistically safe bets. The Kansas City Royals currently hold the final wild card spot with a 75.1 percent chance of retaining it.

Elsewhere, the Boston Red Sox (39.1 percent) are the only other team really in the running. The Seattle Mariners have fallen to 12.6 percent, and the Tampa Bay Rays — who made waves in July — have a 4 percent chance.

In the National League, the Los Angeles Dodgers (100 percent), Philadelphia Phillies (99.5 percent) and Milwaukee Brewers (99.3 percent) are all but locked up a playoff spot, while the San Diego Padres (95.1 percent) and Arizona Diamondbacks (92 percent) are in strong positions to join them.

The preseason favorite Atlanta Braves are being decimated by injuries, but even they have a strong 74.6 percent chance of winning the final wild-card spot. The only team really chasing the Braves are the New York Mets, whose playoff odds have dropped to 25.5 percent after hovering just above 50 percent in late July. No other NL team has double-digit playoff odds, with only the San Francisco Giants (7 percent) having a better than 3 percent chance.

Such clarity, in a way, began at the All-Star break. The best teams in baseball since the break are the Diamondbacks (23-8), Padres (22-7), Dodgers (20-11), Royals (19-11), Astros (18-12) and Brewers (18-11), and those six have shifted the balance of every nearly undecided playoff spot.

The Astros have completely pulled away from the Mariners in the AL West. The two were separated by just one game at halftime, but the Mariners have struggled for weeks and have a losing record since the trade deadline, despite making significant additions (they surpassed the nowhere Oakland A’s in August).

The AL Wild Card race has long had one spot all but guaranteed (the second-place team in the East is bound to be a wild card), but the Royals and Twins have seized control of the other two. They’re tied, 3 1/2 games ahead of the Red Sox and at least six games ahead of everyone else. It’s not an insurmountable lead, but here’s a Red Sox blog trying to calculate what the Red Sox need to close that gap.

Twins are on a 90/91 winning streak. To get to 92, they need to go 25-11.

Suppose they play 5-5 against AZ/BAL/NYY, then they have to play 20-6 against the other teams.

They really need to pull off a 10-2 run or something in this set to make the math work.

— Chris Hatfield (@SPChrisHatfield) August 22, 2024

In the National League, the Brewers have pulled away from the rest of the Central. On July 13 — the weekend before the All-Star Game — the Cardinals were within 3 1/2 games of first place, and every team in the division had at least an 8 percent chance of making the playoffs. The Brewers are now the only team in the division above .500, and none of the others have even a 3 percent chance of playing in October.

In the NL West, the Giants are better than most since the break (18-14), but they haven’t been able to match the offensively powerful Padres and Diamondbacks, both of whom could have overtaken the heavily favored Dodgers if the Dodgers hadn’t also been in such good shape. One team is going to win the West, and the other two are heavy favorites to advance as wild-card runners. FanGraphs has the Padres and Diamondbacks’ playoff odds tied with the Guardians, who are one of the best teams in baseball with off-the-charts vibes.

With the Phillies controlling the NL East, the only other National League spot still remotely up for grabs is the final wild card, currently held by the struggling Braves, who just added Austin Riley to an injured list that already includes Spencer Strider, Ronald Acuna Jr. and Ozzie Albies. If the Mets get hot — as they did in July — they might be able to close the gap and make a legitimate bid to beat the preseason favorites for a playoff spot.

The Red Sox could also get going and beat one of the AL Central favorites to sneak into the postseason. It’s not like there’s nothing left to play for in the next five weeks.

But when all is said and done and the play-off playing field is set, we could conclude that the real sprint to October is over before the calendar even turns to September.

(Top photo: Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)