Welcome to the race to the bottom for the third National League wild card. The finish should be thrilling, if not pretty, and it’s precisely what Major League Baseball signed up for when it expanded the postseason to six teams per league before last season.

Engaged fanbases. Heated races. Mediocre play.

The San Francisco Giants are a flawed baseball team. That much has been on display for the better part of three months, now, and was only made clearer as they went 1-6 on their past trip to drop them all the way back to .500.

But the good news, Giants fans, is that so are the Diamondbacks. And the Marlins. And the Reds.

And one of those teams will be playing in October.

“It’s probably gonna come down to the last day,” outfielder Mike Yastrzemski said of the race last week.

In fact, the competition has been so underwhelming, that multiple people within the Giants organization suggested that they wouldn’t count out the Padres, who had just taken them to town for three out of four games. (San Diego went on to lose two of three to the Phillies.)

The Padres, after all, have outscored their opponents this season by a 64-run margin. It hasn’t translated to a winning record due to a dreadful 6-22 mark in one-run games, 0-11 in extra innings, but it’s a historically significant measure of success that none of the Giants (minus-19), Diamondbacks (minus-14), Reds (minus-37) nor Marlins (minus-44) can claim.

There have been only nine teams in MLB history to make the postseason with a negative run differential, and four came during shortened seasons (three in 2020). It’s worth noting that last season, the NL’s third wild card, the Phillies, reached the World Series, and the race on the American League side this year is shaping up to leave one deserving club home.

But whether or not the baseball is good, it’s good for baseball.

Attendance leaguewide is up 9.1% from last season, at an average of 28,989 per game, on pace for the largest year-over-year increase since 1992-93. Twenty-four teams are on pace to outdraw last season, the top of the list basically replicating the wild-card standings — Phillies (plus-9,877 per game), Reds (7,147), Diamondbacks (4,126), Marlins (2,777) — though the Giants (minus-141) are absent.

Chalk up some of that to the new rules, no doubt. Games are shorter and more action packed. They’re playing faster (2:41 on average) than any time since the 1980s and stealing bases like never before (the 80% success rate on pace for an all-time high).

But there are also more teams in it than ever before. As we saw at a quieter-than-usual trade deadline, when few premium players were made available, everyone believes they’re a contender these days. Before last season, the Giants’ 1-6 trip, featuring a sweep at the hands of the club in front of them in the wild-card standings, would have been the dagger in their season.

Yet, here they are, still, with the ability to take their playoff fate back into their own hands.

A make-or-break homestand against the cellar-dwelling Rockies and sub-.500 Guardians began Friday night. That’s followed by four more at Coors Field before the Giants close with 12 straight against the Diamondbacks, Padres and Dodgers.

“Understanding that each game matters, when you get a chance to beat somebody, you’d better do it,” Yastrzemski said. “We’ve just got to play our best, and I think we’re only going to do that if we enjoy the moment.

“We’ve got a good opportunity in front of us, and if we start thinking about the opportunity, we’re probably going to handcuff ourselves. But if we just go out there, play our game and have fun, you can go home and rest your head at night and sleep well.”

Shortstop Luciano “could be an option” >> Shortstop Marco Luciano, out since Aug. 8 with a hamstring injury, has returned to game action and “could be an option” for the Giants down the stretch, manager Gabe Kapler said.

Luciano, the Giants’ top hitting prospect, played five innings in an instructional league game this week and was scheduled to play seven innings Friday.

Luciano’s first stint in the big leagues didn’t last long — only four games — and he played only six games at Triple-A Sacramento before getting hurt.

Notable >> HP Alex Cobb (hip) expects to start Monday. He would have been scheduled to make his next start this weekend but it was pushed back after he received a cortisone shot for the hip that has been bothering him since mid-June.