The American League West, man, it just keeps finding new ways to baffle you. On Friday, both the Houston Astros and the Texas Rangers, the two teams battling for the division crown, lost their games, pushing their records to 79-81 with only two games left to play. This officially guarantees that for the first time in MLB history, a team with a .500 or worse record will be celebrating a division title. You read that right, folks. A sub-.500 team is gonna uncork champagne.
Seriously, What Even Is This Division?
So, let’s break down the latest round of nonsense. The Rangers got absolutely blown out by the Minnesota Twins, 10-2. Meanwhile, the Astros couldn’t even handle the fourth-place Athletics, losing 6-5. Before this year, the closest a division champ got to .500 was the 2005 San Diego Padres, who took the NL West with an 82-80 record before getting swept in the NLDS. We’ve seen teams with records at or below .500 make the postseason before, but never, ever, actually win their division. The Astros effectively hold the lead right now thanks to owning the tiebreaker against the Rangers. They’ll finish up against the A’s, while the Rangers face the Twins. Our Texas rivals need to win one more game than Houston to snatch the top spot. Whoever takes this thing gets to host a wild-card series against the AL’s third wild-card team. The kicker? The other two wild-card teams, the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, both have better records.
The AL West: A Masterclass In Misery
This entire division has been a disaster all season, seriously. The AL West is a combined 84 games below .500 with a staggering -473 run differential. Every single team is in the red there, with the Rangers “leading” the pack at -48. Get this: there are 13 teams in MLB who would be leading this division if they were in it, including the Arizona Diamondbacks and Pittsburgh Pirates, who aren’t even in contention for a postseason spot themselves! It’s been so bad that three of the five teams,the Astros, Angels, and A’s,have fired their general managers this season, and yep, that includes one of the teams currently vying for the division title. It’s a wide-ranging buffet of pain. Our Mariners are one of the most disappointing teams in baseball after last year’s supposed breakthrough. The Astros and Rangers have both won titles in the last five years and have fallen off a cliff. The A’s are playing in a minor-league stadium after a messy divorce from Oakland. The Angels haven’t even had a winning season since the year “Mad Men” wrapped up.
Get Ready For Some Awkward Baseball
It’s all tremendously awkward. It’s gonna be awkward when one of these teams celebrates winning a crown almost by default. It’s gonna be awkward when a stadium welcomes an ill-deserved series against a team with a much better record. And it’s definitely gonna be awkward when the other four teams look around and wonder how they missed out on a division with the lowest of bars to clear. And speaking of awkward, our Mariners dropped another one, 6-4 to the Angels. Just a perfect cap to this whole AL West mess, huh? This division is going to crown a champion by default, host a series it doesn’t deserve, and leave the rest of us wondering how we let such a low bar slip away. Get ready, Seattle, because this is going to be some truly bizarre baseball.
This article was created with AI assistance and published under Seattle On Tap’s editorial standards. See our Editorial Policy.
Originally reported by Yahoo Sports.
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