With the regular season winding down, six teams have already locked up their spots in October — but the National League's final two wild-card berths are turning into one of the tightest scrambles baseball has seen in years.

The Tampa Bay Rays, Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers, New York Yankees, Atlanta Braves and Boston Red Sox have all clinched postseason spots, according to ESPN's playoff tracker. The Brewers own the best record in the sport and have wrapped up the NL Central, the Dodgers have taken the NL West, and the Braves have the NL East in hand.

Three Teams, Two Spots, Days to Go

That leaves the Chicago Cubs, Philadelphia Phillies and San Diego Padres bunched together for the NL's two remaining wild-card slots, with CBS Sports' playoff picture showing the trio separated by a game or less depending on the day. Every game left on the schedule now carries postseason weight for all three franchises, and the margin for error has essentially disappeared.

SEPARATED BY A GAME OR LESS

The stakes are amplified by what's waiting on the other side: under MLB's current format, wild-card teams open the postseason on the road in a best-of-three series against a division winner, meaning seeding and even a single tiebreaker game could shape which of the three survives the first week of October. MLB.com's official bracket page is being updated daily as the standings shift.

For the Cubs, Phillies and Padres alike, the final week amounts to a referendum on rosters built with October in mind. All three front offices have been scouring bullpen and bench depth in the season's closing days, with every transaction now magnified by how close the standings have become.

The MLB postseason opens Sept. 29, giving all three teams barely a week to separate themselves — or, just as likely, to still be fighting it out with the standings unresolved until the regular season's final pitch.