There are two weeks left in the Major League Baseball season and the Padres are not only in the race for the playoffs, they are also sitting front row at the Eras Tour and taking selfies with Taylor Swift.

Statistical models suggest the Padres have at least a 95% chance of making the postseason with 12 games remaining. Here’s how the National League Wild Card standings look as the Friars prepare for their final home game of the year:

The Cubs are in because Chicago is technically still in the race, but realistically there are only four teams left battling for three postseason spots, and this is where we start talking about magic numbers.

A magic number, in baseball parlance, is the distance a team is from a playoff spot. Right now, the Padres’ magic number is 10. When it reaches zero, they’re in the postseason. How it gets down to zero is both simple and, this year, a little complicated.

With each win, that number drops by one. That’s the easy part. Every time the last team outside the playoff bubble loses, that number also drops by one. With the Mets and Braves tied for the final playoff spot, the Padres’ number drops every time either of them loses (if they stay tied) or when the team trailing the other loses.

For example, if the Mets beat the Nationals and the Braves lose to the Dodgers on Monday, the Padres’ magic number will rise to nine, but only losses to Atlanta can shrink it further, because that would put New York alone in the last playoff spot (I hope that makes some sense).

With this in mind, the question for sports fans in San Diego is: When can we officially celebrate our playoff entry?

The earliest that could happen is Saturday, September 21, the penultimate home game at Petco Park against the truly awful Chicago White Sox. However, that would require a perfect scenario in which the Padres win their next five games, including a sweep of the Astros, and either the Mets or Braves lose five games in a row.

Of course, the chances of either happening aren’t great. Realistically, we can expect the Padres to win at least 4-2 in their last home game. Atlanta finishes a series against the Dodgers at home on Monday and then begins a 6-game road trip through Cincinnati and Miami. New York has three home games against Washington and then hosts Philadelphia, the team with the best record in baseball, for four games.

The Braves have it easier here, so if they can go 5-2 during this stretch while the Mets go 4-3, then their magic number would be down to three by September 24, when the Friars head to Los Angeles to begin a three-game series. That same day, the Mets and Braves begin a series in Atlanta, guaranteeing that someone will lose.

So chances are very good that the Padres will celebrate their entry into the postseason by causing alcohol-soaked chaos in the Dodger Stadium visitors’ locker room with four or five games to go.

And speaking of LA, the Friars are only 3.5 games behind the Dodgers in the National League West, so it’s not impossible that the Padres could overtake LA and win the division…but let’s take this one step at a time.