How badly must the St. Louis Cardinals play down the stretch for the Pittsburgh Pirates to catch them?

The first-place St. Louis Cardinals lost to the Washington Nationals on Wednesday night. The Pittsburgh PIrates, who are in second place, lost in Milwaukee. As a result, the National League Central division race hasn't changed too terribly much from before play began on Wednesday and when it ended. The Pirates missed an opportunity to gain ground on the Cardinals, and so St. Louis owns a six-game lead in the division.

The Chicago Cubs are the team with the NL's third-highest winning percentage and they sit 10.5 game behind the Cardinals. While it's possible that something crazy might happen (after all, this is baseball), there's little chance (0.4% entering play on September 3, according to Fangraphs) that the Cubs will catch the Cards. Consequently, the Cubs aren't included in this post's exercise.

The Cardinals have an off-day today. Tonight, the Pirates hope to end their two-game skid and avoid a sweep at the hands of the Brewers. On Friday, St. Louis and PIttsburgh square off in the first of three weekend games at Busch Stadium. Today's post serves as a scene-setter for that series and the rest of the season.

As of September 3, the Cards have outplayed the PIrates this year—both in terms of quality and quantity. The Cardinals' .647 winning percentage is the best in baseball and tops the Pirates' .607 by a fair margin. El Birdos have also played more of their 162 games than the Buccos: 133 to 131. Pittsburgh could gain or lose a full game in the standings yet this season on St. Louis off-days.

After Wednesday night's games, the 10,000 Fangraphs simulations of the remainder of the season give the Cardinals 91.7% odds of winning the Central to the Pirates' 7.9%. In other words: It's possible for the Pirates to catch and surpass the Cardinals in the Central standings, but highly unlikely. The Cardinals have banked a lot of wins to date and have a healthy lead. Today I thought we might take a look at what that means. I put together a chart that shows the Cardinals' possible records over their remaining 29 games and how many games the Pirates will have to win out of their remaining 31 to St. Louis in the division standings. I've highlighted in dark green the rest-of-season record for each team, based on the Fangraphs projections and then highlighted next to them the lines that encompass what the other club must do to finish ahead, behind, or tie in the standings.

FanDuel

SBN and FanDuel have entered into an exclusive partnership regarding daily fantasy baseball. Since Jacob DeGrom got lit up the last time I picked him and the Mets face the lowly Marlins, I'm going to go with DeGrom today. Play FanDuel here.

Correction: The original chart contained an error and should now be corrected.