WASHINGTON — Baseball’s a funny sport. It is full of individual moments of excitement trapped within the six-month slog of the regular season, within which each game is but a minute element.

And while September games may feel more important than April games, they all count equally. The only games that inherently carry more weight are those against a division rival with whom you are fighting for a postseason spot. That’s the main reason why, as the Washington Nationals’ mathematical odds grow long as the twilight shadows, especially after deflating losses like the past two, their path to the postseason is not entirely blocked just yet.

Washington is 6.5 games back entering play Wednesday, but only six losses behind the New York Mets. With six head-to-head matchups remaining, the teams could conceivably play at the same pace the rest of the way for all their non-head-to-head games, and the Nats could catch up simply by winning the six remaining contests between them.

According to Baseball Prospectus, the Nationals had an 8.1 percent chance to make the postseason heading into play Tuesday (6.5 percent to win the NL East, 1.6 percent to make the second Wild Card.) FanGraphs likes Washington’s chances better, listing their playoff odds still at 14.3 percent (12.3 for the division, 2.0 for the Wild Card). Those odds were likely narrowed ever-so-slightly with both teams losing Tuesday night.

The Nationals hit a peak of 90 percent (per BP) back on May 28, but have been as high as 89 percent on July 5, 85 percent on July 17, and 81 percent on July 30. But a moribund 12-17 August, combined with New York’s torrid 20-8 stretch over the same span, has put the season on the brink.

If Washington is going to make it to the playoffs, it will need a number of things to happen, other than the increasingly obvious ones mentioned here before. See the slides above for what it will take for the Nats to keep playing into October this year.