A pair of division leaders will be in playoff mode this week as the Philadelphia Phillies visit the Los Angeles Dodgers for a three-game series that starts Monday.

The Milwaukee Brewers lead the National League with a 91-59 record, while the Phillies are the next-best division leader at 89-61. The Dodgers have the third-best record among division leaders at 84-65, 4 1/2 games behind Philadelphia.

The top two teams in each league get a bye through the wild-card round, with the third team from that list forced to play an extra round in the playoffs.

Adding to the atmosphere this week is that the Phillies will clinch the NL East title with their next victory.

The Dodgers gained a game on the Phillies on Sunday with a 10-2 victory over the San Francisco Giants. Philadelphia saw a six-game winning streak come to an end Sunday with a 10-3 home loss to the Kansas City Royals but clinched its fourth consecutive playoff berth when the Dodgers defeated the Giants.

On Aug. 27, the Dodgers were a half-game better than the Phillies for second-best record among division leaders, but Philadelphia went on a 13-3 run to take a solid hold of that second spot.

“They’re big,” Phillies manager Rob Thomson said of this week’s games at Los Angeles. “You have the bye that’s involved and they’re a good club. We’re going to their place, which is going to be raucous, so it’s going to be a big series.”

While the Phillies will send left-hander Ranger Suarez (12-6, 2.77 ERA) to the mound Monday, the Dodgers will counter with right-hander Emmet Sheehan (6-3, 3.32).

Suarez has been in elite form over his last four starts, going 3-0 with a 0.38 ERA over 24 innings. He gave up just one hit over six scoreless innings and had a season-best 12 strikeouts in a win last Tuesday over the New York Mets.

He is 3-2 with a 3.42 ERA in 23 2/3 innings over seven lifetime appearances (four starts) against Los Angeles.

While the Dodgers’ pitching took center stage with a pair of near no-hitters over the past week, the offense came to life over the weekend. The Dodgers had at least 17 hits in victories Saturday and Sunday at San Francisco, the first time with that many in back-to-back games since late April.

“I think it was intent, quality of at-bat, winning pitches, using the whole field, not (striking out),” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of the offense. “I think that all of these things, you know it’s in there. We’ve seen it (but) maybe not with the consistency we’ve liked. … To see us do what we did is certainly encouraging.”

Los Angeles third baseman Max Muncy did not play Sunday after he was hit in the back of the helmet by a pitch Saturday. Roberts said his left-handed hitter will take off one of the games against the Phillies, who plan to start three lefties.

The Dodgers have won six of their last seven games while outscoring their opponents 48-19, including Sunday’s 10-2 victory.

Sheehan was not expected to be a part of a postseason rotation, but the 25-year-old is making a case for himself by delivering a 1.45 ERA over his last three starts. He opened his most recent start last Tuesday against the Colorado Rockies with five perfect innings.

Sheehan, who missed the entire 2024 season after Tommy John surgery, has never faced the Phillies.

–Field Level Media

The reeling New York Mets’ struggles have breathed life into the National League wild-card race, and contenders San Francisco and Arizona will try to take advantage when they meet in a three-game series beginning Monday in Phoenix.

The Giants (75-74) sit 1 1/2 games behind the Mets (77-73) for the third wild-card position entering the penultimate week of the regular season. The Diamondbacks (75-75) are another half-game back, just ahead of Cincinnati (74-75).

“We just keep chugging along,” Arizona manager Torey Lovullo said after the D-backs beat Minnesota 6-4 on Sunday to win the rubber game of a three-game series.

“The mentality is every single day brings a new adventure to us, and we’re just going to ride it the best way we know how. And that’s play hard, have great expectations to do it right, win a baseball game and move on to the next day.”

Arizona right-hander Zac Gallen (11-14, 4.84 ERA) will make his second start in six days against San Francisco.

The Giants, who took two out of three against Arizona at home a week ago, will give rookie right-hander Kai-Wei Teng (2-4, 7.54) his sixth start of 2025.

“To be where we are today is kind of disappointing,” San Francisco manager Bob Melvin said after the Giants beat the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday but lost the final two games of a three-game home series.

“They (D-backs) are a good team. We are going to have to play well to beat them. There are several teams in this thing. We are trying to focus on ourselves. Not look behind and not look too far forward.”

The Giants will be without starting first baseman Dominic Smith, who suffered a strained right hamstring while stretching to take a throw on Friday. He was replaced on the roster by Jerar Encarnacion.

The D-backs could be without infielder/outfielder Blaze Alexander, who was removed from Sunday’s victory after being hit by a pitch in the left elbow in the fourth inning. He is considered day-to-day with an elbow contusion.

Diamondbacks catcher James McCann had a season-high four RBIs on Sunday, including a three-run homer in the fourth that put the D-backs ahead to stay at 4-2 lead.

“This is the best part of the year,” McCann said. “When you start in spring training, you talk about this time of the year. You want to have an opportunity in the middle of September to make a push for the playoffs. That’s what we’re in right now.

“This is what you grind six months of the season for.”

Gallen had a hiccup in the Giants’ 5-3 victory last Tuesday at Oracle Park, when he gave up five runs on five hits in 6 2/3 innings. He walked the first two batters he faced before Willy Adames hit a three-run homer for a 3-0 lead that San Francisco never relinquished.

Patrick Bailey also homered off Gallen, who has given up a career-high 28 homers (second in the NL).

That outing ended Gallen’s seven-game stretch since the July 31 trade deadline in which he was 4-1 with six quality starts. He had not allowed more than three runs in any of those seven outings. He is 7-6 with a 3.94 ERA in 18 starts against the Giants.

Teng, 6-foot-4 and 241 pounds, went a season-long 5 1/3 innings in an 8-2 victory over host Colorado on Sept. 1. He gave up four runs on three hits and five walks in a 4-3 loss at St. Louis his last time out.

–Field Level Media

A pair of American League West rivals that took a step in the wrong direction in their respective playoff races on Sunday get a chance to reverse course when Texas Rangers and host Houston Astros open a critical three-game series on Monday night.

Right-handers Jack Leiter (9-8, 3.81 ERA) of the Rangers and Jason Alexander (4-1, 2.82 with Houston, 4.19 overall) of the Astros will get the ball rolling in the teams’ final head-to-head set. Up 6-4, the Rangers need one win in the set to clinch the season series, which could turn into an important tiebreaker.

The Rangers had two narrow wins and one lopsided defeat when the American League West and AL wild-card contenders met Sept. 5-7 in Arlington. Neither Leiter nor Alexander pitched in that series.

Houston (81-69) begins the week in second place in the West, one game behind the Seattle Mariners (82-68) with 12 to go. The two had been tied atop the division before the Astros were beaten 8-3 in Atlanta on Sunday, hours before the Mariners thumped the Los Angeles Angels at home.

The Rangers will take the field three games behind the Mariners and two back of the Astros. The latter is doubly important in that the Astros currently reside in an AL wild-card position, while the Rangers do not.

The Mariners visit Houston for a three-game showdown Friday through Sunday. The Astros hope to be in better shape physically by then.

They haven’t had Isaac Paredes since July 19 because of a hamstring injury. But the slugging third baseman has been working out in Florida with the hopes of returning before the end of the regular season, perhaps as early as later this week.

Houston manager Joe Espada then had to pull Jose Altuve from Saturday’s game against the Braves with a foot injury. Astros general manager Dana Brown disclosed on the team’s pregame show Sunday that the setback is expected to be a minor one.

“We’re not concerned; our medical staff is not concerned,” Brown announced, believing Altuve would miss “a day or two, two days tops.”

The team sparkplug did not play Sunday in Atlanta.

The Rangers (79-71), meanwhile, had a chance to close the gap on the Astros on Sunday but fell 5-2 in 10 innings on the road against the New York Mets. Texas had won the first two games of the series to run its winning streak to six.

If Texas has an advantage in the series, it’s that it appears the Rangers’ latest injury concern is no longer valid. Adolis Garcia returned from a 10-game absence due to a strained right quad to bat cleanup in New York on Sunday.

He went 0-for-4, but the good news outweighed the bad.

“He was really swinging the bat well when he got hurt,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy assured reporters Sunday. “He is a guy that hits in the heart of our order. It’s great to have him.”

Leiter is 1-0 with a 4.38 ERA in 12 1/3 innings over two career starts against the Astros, while Alexander has never faced the Rangers.

–Field Level Media

The Cincinnati Reds lost ground in the National League playoff chase while suffering an untimely three-game weekend sweep from the Athletics in West Sacramento, Calif.

The Reds (74-75) will try to regain traction Monday night when they visit the St. Louis Cardinals (73-77) in the opener of a three-game series.

Cincinnati is 2 1/2 games behind the New York Mets in the race for the final NL wild-card spot. The Cardinals remained four games back of the Mets, who defeated the Texas Rangers 5-2 on Sunday.

The Reds will open the series with pitcher Zack Littell (9-8, 3.78 ERA), who is coming off a strong performance Tuesday at San Diego. The right-hander held the Padres to two runs on two hits and one walk with four strikeouts in six innings of a 4-2 victory,

Littell retired 11 consecutive batters during one stretch while displaying his formula for success.

“I thought he worked with his fastball, and then off of that comes the split,” Reds manager Terry Francona said. “And then the cutter-ish, slider, whatever you want to call it. But I thought he just pitched.”

The Reds are just 3-4 in games Littell started since arriving from the Tampa Bay Rays in a late-season trade, but three of those losses came in extra innings.

One of those defeats came on Aug. 29 at home against the Cardinals. Littell worked seven innings while allowing four runs (three earned) on six hits.

He struck out four batters in that game and walked none. Pedro Pages hit a two-run homer against him and Ivan Herrera hit a solo shot.

Littell is 0-2 with a 6.04 ERA in 22 1/3 innings against the Cardinals in 10 career appearances, including two starts.

The Cardinals (73-77) snapped a five-game losing streak by edging the Brewers 3-2 on Sunday afternoon in Milwaukee.

They will open this series with left-hander Matthew Liberatore (7-12, 4.35), who will try to rebound from one of his toughest outings of the season.

He allowed five runs on six hits, including two homers, in four innings during a 5-3 loss at Seattle on Tuesday.

“Three walks and two mistake pitches,” Liberatore said. “That’s really what it boils down to.”

Liberatore is 0-1 with a 5.63 ERA in two starts against the Reds this season. He allowed five runs on 10 hits, including three homers, and three walks in eight innings.

But he is 1-1 with a 3.45 ERA in 15 2/3 innings over nine career appearances against the Reds, including seven in relief.

The Cardinals regained second baseman Brendan Donovan (groin strain) from the injured list during the series in Milwaukee, but they lost shortstop Masyn Winn to a season-ending torn meniscus in his right knee.

“I was hoping after having three days off it would feel a lot better,” Winn told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “It was really tough to swing, really tough to take ground balls. The training staff noticed it. I was trying to hide it a little bit.”

Donovan and first baseman Willson Contreras should return to the lineup Monday after taking off Sunday. Cardinals manager Oliver Marmol was Contreras “was pretty beat up” after getting hit twice by pitches Saturday.

St. Louis expects to get third baseman Nolan Arenado back from the injured list for this series. He has been on a rehab assignment with Double-A Springfield after recovering from shoulder soreness.

–Field Level Media

The New York Yankees hold the No. 1 spot in the American League wild-card standings, but they would prefer to sit atop their division and let other teams battle it out for the wild card.

New York (83-66) will get a chance to climb closer to first place in the AL East when they open a three-game series against the Minnesota Twins (65-84) on Monday night in Minneapolis.

The Yankees, who have won nine of the last 10 meetings against the Twins, enter the series four games behind the Toronto Blue Jays (87-62) for first place.

New York holds a 1 1/2-game edge over the Boston Red Sox and a 2 1/2-game lead over the Houston Astros, who also occupy wild-card spots. The Texas Rangers and Cleveland Guardians remain in the hunt as they sit two games back and 2 1/2 games back, respectively, of the final wild-card spot.

The Yankees arrive in Minnesota with a bad taste in their mouth after losing 6-4 to the Red Sox on Sunday night. The loss snapped a three-game winning streak.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone did not want to offer a big-picture view of his team’s recent matchups against playoff contenders.

“We’ll get into Minnesota here late and we’ve got another playoff game (Monday),” Boone said. “That’s how I look at it.”

Yankees slugger Aaron Judge will look to stay hot. He has five home runs in his past six games, including his 48th homer of the season Sunday.

“He looks really good,” Boone said. “More good ABs (on Sunday). He smokes a ball off the wall there, the last one. That’s as clean as you can hit a ball the other way. …

“He’s just getting on time, getting into that good position where he’s making his move how he wants to (at the plate). I feel like that’s where he’s kind of been searching for these last few weeks, and it looks really good to me.”

Twins right-hander Simeon Woods Richardson (6-4, 4.58 ERA) will try to stifle Judge and his teammates. Woods Richardson is going for back-to-back wins after holding the Los Angeles Angels to three runs in five innings on Sept. 8.

This will be Woods Richardson’s first career start against the Yankees.

New York will counter with left-hander Carlos Rodon (16-8, 3.11), who has registered three straight quality starts. Rodon took the loss in his last outing despite limiting the Detroit Tigers to two runs on five hits in six innings.

In 15 games (14 starts) against the Twins, Rodon is 9-3 with a 4.00 ERA in 83 1/3 innings.

The Twins are coming off a series loss against the visiting Arizona Diamondbacks, who took two of three over the weekend.

“I feel like we were in every game and competed,” Twins outfielder Matt Wallner said. “(We’re) just taking that and finishing strong and just building for next year — everyone as a group, individually. It can never hurt.”

–Field Level Medi