How the AL West could make ugly MLB history as the Astros and Rangers' playoff race whimpers to the end

No sub-.500 team has ever made the playoffs, even out of a wild-card spot; this year, one could win the division

Sep 24, 2026 at 10:57 am ET • 4 min read

The American League West race is still very much in the air, even with mere days -- hours, if you're partial to more difficult arithmetic -- remaining in the 2026 Major League Baseball season. This would normally yield a certain amount of taut intrigue, given that a playoff berth and World Series aspirations hinge upon the outcome. Normally. This, though, is the AL West in 2026, and normality is not welcome here. 

What is intrigue? It is the unknown punctuated by the compelling. The unknown box is checked, as the Rangers and Astros are tied atop the divisional standings, with the Mariners still clinging to mathematical life. But compelling? 'Tis not. If you will, force your eyes upon those standings, current going into Thursday's slate, and all will be revealed: 

Team	Record	GB	Run differential
Astros	78-80	-	-53
Rangers	78-80	-	-42
Mariners	74-84	4.0	-62
Athletics	63-95	15.0	-217
Angels	60-98	18.0	-93

Compelling? No. Foul-smelling, which rhymes with compelling? Yea, verily. As you can see, every team in the AL West is presently below .500. Since the Astros and Rangers have just four games remaining in the regular season, there's a high chance that the AL West will encumber baseball with the first sub-.500 playoff team in the annals of such things. Yes, even in this ongoing era of playoff bloat, no losing team has ever won a division title or even claimed a wild-card berth. The 2005 Padres at 82-80 for the moment hold the "record" for worst regular-season mark by a playoff team, but the eventual AL West champ, assuming it's not the Mariners, will need to win out in order to avoid breaking that record.

Probing a bit more deeply into the revolting depths of the AL West, these five teams are currently a combined 84 games under .500. Really, though, the AL West has been lucky not to be even worse. If you look at those run differentials -- not that you want to or that it's advised -- you'll find that the teams of the AL West in the aggregate have been outscored by the opposition, which of course means teams not in the AL West, by a total of 467 runs. That's … a lot. It also speaks to how lucky the teams of the AL West have been in 2026, as hard as it is to believe such a thing. 

You can estimate a team's deserved record by calculating it from their run differential, or their runs allowed subtracted from their runs scored. Based on their run differentials, the teams of the AL West should be a combined 90 games under .500. Framed another way, the Angels are the only team in the division that hasn't outplayed its run differential. 

As for more detailed comparisons, the AL West not surprisingly stacks up poorly compared to the rest of the league. On offense, the teams of the AL West have a combined OPS of .706 and have scored 4.20 runs per game in 2026. Teams outside of the AL West have a .721 OPS and have scored 4.53 runs per game. Now for the pitching-and-defense front. AL West teams in 2026 have combined for an ERA of 4.54 and allowed 4.79 runs per game. Teams from other divisions have combined for an ERA of 4.09 and allowed 4.41 runs per game. Those might not strike you as jarring figures, but consider how they scale across the huge sample of games we're talking about. 

Divisional play has been around since 1969, and the AL West of 2026 is going to wind up as the worst division ever. No, no single team of the AL West this season is going to wind up reaching the depths of, say, the 2024 White Sox or the 2025 Rockies, but taken as a unit, no division has been this bad top to bottom and very likely no division will have ever had such a polluting effect on the postseason. 

Speaking of that, some AL West team, like it or not, is going to make the playoffs. One supposes we should talk about that. As you see above, the Astros and Rangers are tied … it's hard to say "atop" about the AL West in 2026, so we'll say bottom turned upside down. Anyway, they're tied for first place with, as noted, four games to play. There are no tiebreaker games these days, and the Astros, by virtue of their 9-4 head-to-head record against Texas, hold the tiebreaker for the division. That, in essence, means they actually lead the Rangers by a single game with four to play. That's largely why SportsLine gives the Astros a 63.6% chance of winning the division. This could, of course, look very different by late Thursday night, but for now, Houston is in the stronger position, such as it is. Yordan Alvarez, certifiable AL MVP candidate, deserves better than to be surrounded by such offal and ordure. 

This being the MLB playoffs, structurally subject to so much randomness and misrule, any team that's in the field has a realistic shot to win it all, as the 83-win 2006 Cardinals will surely attest. That means, yes, it's possible that a losing team will wind up hoisting the trophy. For that slimy possibility, you may thank the AL West in 2026.