Mike Celizic

Winning a division is no guarantee of winning the World Series or even getting to it, and this year the National League division winners especially have every reason to be afraid of what can come out of the league’s cavalry charge of a wild-card race.

Teams will never say they care who their opponent is in a playoff, but you’ve got to figure the Braves and Cardinals — forget the Padres; they’re not going anywhere — have a more than passing interest in who survives that battle.

It’s pretty much down to three teams now, the Marlins, Phillies and Astros. And although teams say they don’t cheer for battles they’re not part of, both St. Louis and Atlanta have to be hoping that Philadelphia, and not Houston or Florida, is the last team standing in October.

I’m not saying Philly is a bad team. I’m just about positive they can kick the stuffing out of San Diego. But the Phillies don’t scare you, not the way Florida and Houston do, because they don’t have big-time starting pitching that can shut you down long enough to get to closer Billy Wagner and a pretty good bullpen.

The Astros can roll Roger Clemens, Andy Pettitte and Roy Oswalt out as their top three and the team ERA is second in baseball to St. Louis. Brad Lidge isn’t Billy Wagner as a closer, but he’s sealed the deal in all but three of his save opportunities this year and is carrying a 2.26 ERA.

The Marlins can throw Dontrelle Willis, Josh Beckett and A.J. Burnett, and their team ERA is fourth in the National League, just a smidgen behind Atlanta. And, while he doesn’t have the name recognition of other closers, Florida’s Todd Jones, who’s been kicking around the game since 1993 and had only five saves in the past three years, is 36-for-38 with a 1.13 ERA as a closer.

That’s scary, and it doesn’t really matter who the fourth starter is; he’ll be going against the other team’s No. 4 man and doesn’t have to be great. You roll three top starters out in the postseason, and you’ve got a heckuva a chance of winning.

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What’s more, wild card playoff teams have won the last three World Series, and two of those — the 2002 Angels and 2003 Marlins — did it with pitching. The other team — the 2004 Red Sox — had two great starters in Curt Schilling and Pedro Martinez, a couple others who rose to the occasion, and a lot of great hitting.

When the wild card was born in 1995, it was designed to add interest to the game after the disastrous strike of 1994 that canceled the postseason for the first time in history. Traditionalists cried about it ruining the game, much as they had cried about every other innovation, beginning with catcher’s masks more than 100 years ago. But it did have the intended effect, allowing the Yankees to sneak into the playoffs in 1995 for the first time since 1981 and giving Colorado its first taste of the playoffs.

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But the wild card wasn’t a threat to win it all, not in the beginning. Until 2002, only one wild card team — the 1997 Marlins — ever won the World Series and only one other — the 2000 Mets — made it to the season’s final best-of-seven.

But in 1999, both wild cards — Boston and the Mets — made it to the league championship series. The following year, Seattle and the Mets also made their respective LCS as wild cards. No wild card made the LCS in 2001, but the following year, the Angels, who still thought they played in Anaheim and not L.A., became the second team to win the Series as a wild card. That year, San Francisco also got to the World Series as baseball’s bonus playoff team.

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