American League: One of the Worst Playoff Races in History

It's true that there's still a month left in the 2026 Major League Baseball season. But barring a major shake-up in the American League, we're headed for one of the worst playoff races in MLB history.

Yes, yes, you read that right.

Especially when it comes to the American League West and the race for the final “best second-place” spot.

In fact, if the season ended today, we'd have a division winner at .500 (the Houston Astros) and two teams with a negative run differential—namely, those same Astros and the Cleveland Guardians.

In the West, every team has a negative run differential, while Houston, at minus-46, currently holds the best record in the division. Yikes.

Collectively, the five teams in this division have been outscored by their opponents by a staggering total of 432 runs. Three of them—the Sacramento A's, the Los Angeles Angels, and the Seattle Mariners—rank among the bottom four in the American League in this category.

In total, only five of the American League's fifteen teams have positive run differentials. If this figure holds, it will be the lowest number either league has recorded for a 162-game season since 1997.

Let's take it a step further.

MLB expanded the number of playoff teams from four to eight in 1995, marking the beginning of the Wild Card era. Over the 29 162-game seasons since then, 22 division champions have won fewer than 90 games—12.6% of the 174 champions.

Four division champions failed to reach 85 wins (2.3%), the most recent being in 2008, when the Los Angeles Dodgers won the National League West with an 84–78 record and a run differential of +52.

This year, two more teams are likely to join the list of those with fewer than 85 wins, as in addition to the Astros, the Chicago White Sox—who lead the Central Division—are on track to win exactly 85 games, while the Guardians could finish with 82 wins.

None of this will prevent one of these teams from pulling off a Cinderella run in the playoffs, but let's just say that, for now, it doesn't look good.

• The National League standings.

• That was a close call.

• The tribute to Buck Martinez and the Blue Jays' win are getting less attention than this… and this.

• Luis Robert Jr. on waivers.

• One to watch.

Created by humans, assisted by AI.