The American League West spent 2026 losing, and on Saturday it made the result official. The Houston Astros lost 6-5 to the Athletics and the Texas Rangers lost 10-2 to the Minnesota Twins, dropping both clubs to 79-82 with one game left to play. Whichever of them wins the division will do it with a losing record — something no team has managed in a full Major League Baseball season.
The best either can finish is 80-82.
The old bar was 82-80
Until now the weakest division champion on record was the 2005 San Diego Padres, who took the National League West at 82-80. The 2006 St. Louis Cardinals won the NL Central with 83 wins. Both finished above .500.
Houston holds the tiebreaker
Each team has one game left on Sunday — Houston against the Athletics, Texas against the Twins. The Rangers need to win one more game than the Astros to take the title. If the two finish level, the division goes to Houston, which won the head-to-head season series.
A club under .500 gets home field
The AL West champion hosts a best-of-three wild-card series against the American League's third wild card. The New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, both with far better records, meet in the other series. So a team with a losing record will open the postseason at home, against a wild card that arrives with a much stronger season behind it.
A division 84 games under .500
The five AL West clubs are a combined 84 games below .500, with a run differential of minus 473. Thirteen other major league teams would lead the division with their current records, among them Arizona and Pittsburgh — neither of which holds a playoff spot.
Elsewhere on the last day, going into the weekend's final two games the Cleveland Guardians led the Chicago White Sox by one game in the AL Central, with both already holding playoff berths, and the Philadelphia Phillies held the last National League wild card one game ahead of the Arizona Diamondbacks, according to CBS Sports. The Tampa Bay Rays, Milwaukee Brewers, Los Angeles Dodgers and Atlanta Braves had already clinched their divisions.
What the AL West exposes is the arithmetic of a 12-team playoff field: winning a weak division is worth more than a strong record in a hard one, and this year the gap between those two things has never been wider.
Reporting from Yahoo Sports, Sports Illustrated and CBS Sports.
