Heading into the season's 2nd half

The NL Wild Card standings are about to heat up as teams return from the MLB All-Star break and resume play on Friday night.

Following an up-and-down start to the season, the San Francisco Giants enter the second half of the season sitting just a half-game back of their NL West foe, the San Diego Padres, for the third and final NL Wild Card spot with 65 games remaining.

Here’s a look at the updated NL Wild Card standings and a peek at who San Francisco will be battling it out with for a postseason spot as the regular season winds down.

NL Wild Card Standings

ESPN

The Giants may be just a half-game back of an NL Wild Card spot, but they’re also still in the NL West race (6 games back of the Los Angeles Dodgers).

Still, the Wild Card is likely their best route forward, and San Francisco will have its work cut out for it in the second half while attempting to hold off teams beneath it, such as St. Louis and Cincinnati.

According to Tankathon, the Giants hold the 22nd hardest remaining strength of schedule in Major League Baseball (fifth-easiest in the National League). In contrast, the Reds (1st hardest in MLB), New York Mets (7th hardest in MLB), and Cardinals (19th-hardest in MLB) all have a more difficult collection of final opponents.

San Francisco will have a chance to battle the teams around and in front of them, most notably the Padres, whom they will face seven times during the second half. The Giants also have six games remaining against the Mets the rest of the way.

It’s going to be a wild sprint to the finish, and if San Francisco wants to assert itself in the NL Wild Card standings, they can get off on the right foot by taking care of business this weekend against the Toronto Blue Jays.

More MLB & SF Giants content from Sactown Sports

MLB Players Association executive director Tony Clark doubled down on his opposition to an MLB salary cap on Tuesday, saying during All-Star festivities in Atlanta that such a change to the game’s economic structure would move the game “backward.”

Both Clark and commissioner Rob Manfred addressed several topics with members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America before Tuesday’s All-Star Game. Manfred is reportedly pushing for an MLB salary cap in the next collective bargaining agreement, calling for more competitive balance around the league.

Clark and the players’ union, meanwhile, remain vehemently against it.

“(The owners) obviously have their interests, and those interests aren’t much different from the interests they’ve had for the last three, four, five decades at this point,” Clark said, according to Sports Business Journal. “Whereas the game is in a great place — the game appears to be growing and moving in the right direction, with more attendance than we’ve had in a long time — and more people are watching and streaming the games than we’ve ever had before.

Heading into the season’s 2nd half

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