The AL Wild Card Mess Is Competitive Balance, and It’s Not Pretty
In 1981, when a seven-week players’ strike split the season into two “halves,” and in 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic shortened the season to 60 games, teams with sub-.500 records snuck into the postseason via expanded playoff formats created to accommodate the unique and extraordinary circumstances. No team finishing below .500 over the course of a full schedule has received a playoff berth, but the possibility looms large this year. With five and a half weeks and about 35 games per team still to play, the American League has just five teams above .500, including one — the AL West-leading Astros — that entered Wednesday right at that mark before beating the Angels. It’s not out of the question that two sub-.500 teams could make the playoffs, but for all of the owners’ carping about a lack of competitive balance, messy free-for-alls such as this are just what Major League Baseball wants.
If the postseason were to start today, the Rays (76-50) would win the AL East by five games and White Sox (66-60) the AL Central by four games, with both earning first-round byes. The Yankees (71-55) and Red Sox (68-59) would qualify as the top two Wild Card winners; as the fourth and fifth seeds, they would square off in a best-of-three Wild Card Series as they did last season. But from there, things get ugly. The Astros (64-63) are currently clinging to a two-game lead over the Rangers (62-65) atop the AL West, but with a projected win total of 82 wins according to our Playoff Odds, they don’t have much margin for error when it comes to clearing the .500 bar, and could join or surpass the 2005 Padres (82-80) and 1973 Mets (82-79) in terms of mediocre division winners. The 1994 Rangers were a whopping 10 games below .500 at 52-62 but one game ahead of the A’s (51-63) when the players’ strike put them both out of their misery, though MLB does not consider any first-place teams from the shortened season to be official division winners. That’s how the Braves, who trailed the NL East-leading Expos by six games when the strike hit, are still considered to have won 14 consecutive division titles from 1991–2005 (an assertion I take issue with, but that’s an argument for another day).
Here’s how the AL Wild Card picture looks, with playoff odds as of 9 AM on Thursday morning:
| Team | W | L | W% | WCGB | Proj W | Proj L | Win Div | Bye | Wild Card | Playoffs | Win WS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yankees | 71 | 55 | .563 | 9 | 90.6 | 71.4 | 16.3% | 16.3% | 83.5% | 99.8% | 8.6% |
| Red Sox | 68 | 59 | .535 | 5.5 | 86.7 | 75.3 | 2.5% | 2.5% | 92.2% | 94.7% | 6.6% |
| Twins | 63 | 65 | .492 | 0 | 80.5 | 81.5 | 23.9% | 13.5% | 15.4% | 39.3% | 1.9% |
| Rangers | 62 | 65 | .488 | 0.5 | 79.8 | 82.2 | 20.2% | 7.1% | 10.4% | 30.6% | 1.8% |
| Blue Jays | 62 | 66 | .484 | 1 | 79.1 | 82.9 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 16.9% | 16.9% | 0.6% |
| Guardians | 61 | 66 | .480 | 1.5 | 79.5 | 82.5 | 11.9% | 6.0% | 11.9% | 23.8% | 1.2% |
| Tigers | 61 | 66 | .480 | 1.5 | 78.7 | 83.3 | 7.4% | 3.6% | 7.3% | 14.8% | 0.7% |
| Orioles | 61 | 66 | .480 | 1.5 | 78.5 | 83.5 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 12.4% | 12.4% | 0.4% |
| Mariners | 60 | 67 | .472 | 2.5 | 80.1 | 81.9 | 27.4% | 8.9% | 9.5% | 36.9% | 4.2% |
Minnesota currently “leads” the race for the third spot, with two other teams within a single game and four more within two and a half games. The Twins are currently on track to square off against the third-seeded Astros in a Wild Card series that isn’t far from pitting two sub-.500 teams against each other. One would advance, but I’d hardly call that a win for baseball.
You may recall that just over two weeks ago, as the trade deadline approached, the Tigers traded away both Tarik Skubal and Casey Mize, the Blue Jays dealt Kevin Gausman, Jeff Hoffman, and Daulton Varsho, and the Orioles parted with Adley Rutschman, Taylor Ward, and Tyler Wells. Moves such as those suggested “wait ’til next year,” even if those teams generally acquired major league talent to replace them. The Tigers won five of their first seven games after the deadline, but they’ve since cooled off and are now 7-8 since the bell rung, as are the Orioles. Those two teams have at least fared better than the Mariners (5-9) and Guardians (4-10), both of whom actively tried to shore up their rosters for the stretch run. Their playoff odds have dropped by 18.4% and 27.4%, respectively, though their overall odds remain higher than those of the Blue Jays, Tigers, and Orioles since the door to a division title remains ajar. Meanwhile, Toronto has gone 9-6 to climb back into the picture despite additionally losing both Trey Yesavage and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to the injured list; their odds have increased by an AL-high 12.1% since the deadline.
The likelihood of scrums such as this increased significantly with the 2022 expansion of the playoff field from 10 teams to 12. MLB and its 30 teams money their money very money, and not only are networks willing to pay significantly more to televise postseason games than regular season ones, but the possibility of a .500ish David upsetting a Goliath in a short series — à la the 2023 Diamondbacks (21st in payroll) over the Dodgers (fifth) and Phillies (fourth) — allows the owners to have their cake and eat it too, even if it doesn’t always work out for the networks. Fans love a Cinderella story now and again, and such runs help front offices justify aiming for the slightly-upper middle-of-the-pack (see Jerry Dipoto and his infamous 54% comment) instead of spending even more heavily to improve their odds of winning. After all, over the course of a three-, five-, or seven-game series, anything can happen.
Once upon a time, this close late-season clustering at least offered the tantalizing possibility of end-of-season chaos in the form of tiebreaker games. In 2018, the NL West’s Dodgers and Rockies and the NL Central’s Brewers and Cubs played Game 163 tiebreakers, with the winners claiming division titles and the losers pushed into the one-and-done Wild Card game. That format is now as bygone as pitchers hitting, and so Team Entropy — the concept of rooting for results that create chaos rather than pledging allegiance to a given team — is no more. Instead we’re left with the excitement of playoff spots and seeding being decided by mathematics. Since most baseball fans are at least somewhat numbers-oriented, this isn’t quite as perverse as hitting yourself in the thumb with a hammer just to feel something, but it ain’t great.
Appropriately as we bemoan the Death of Fun, MLB has five steps for breaking the ties, one for each stage of grief:
- Head-to-head records: This is self-explanatory when it comes to two-team tiebreakers, and if they played an odd number of games against each other, which is currently the case if they’re in the same division, then no other steps will be necessary. If more than two teams are involved and they have identical records against each other, then the team with the best combined winning percentage against the other teams within the tie wins the tiebreaker. If it’s still relevant, the remaining two teams are un-tied via head-to-head records and on down the line.
If more than two teams are involved and they do not have identical records against one another, but one team won its season series against each of the other teams, then that team wins the tiebreaker. Otherwise, it goes in order of combined winning percentage against the other teams they’re tied with, as above.
- Intradivision records: This one is relevant only for two situations: multi-team scenarios where the teams all have the same head-to-head records within the group, or for two Wild Card teams in different divisions. In the latter case, there’s still a good chance they played seven games against each other instead of six.
- Intraleague records: A team’s record against all three divisions in the same league.
- Last half of intraleague games: If a team has played 48 interleague games, then this would be decided based on their winning percentage over the last 57 (half of 114) games against teams in their own league. And if that doesn’t work…
- Last half of intraleague games plus one… or more, as needed: Under the above scenario, this would be decided based on their winning percentage over the last 58 intraleague games, then 59, 60, 61… as many as it takes.
In practice, this rarely gets past intradivision records even when gaming out hypothetical scenarios, and under the new format, the teams that have missed the postseason because of tiebreakers did so on the basis of head-to-head records. Last year featured one such case in each league. The Tigers beat out the Astros (both 87-75) for the third AL Wild Card spot, and the Reds beat out the Mets (both 83-79) for the third NL one, both on the basis of 4-2 season series wins. In 2024, a three-way tie for the second and third NL Wild Card spots involving the Braves, Mets, and Diamondbacks (all 89-73) left Arizona outside. The Braves won their season series against both teams, and the Mets went 4-3 against the Diamondbacks.
It’s too early to game out every scenario given the number of teams involved. Hell, it’s too early to be talking about any of this stuff, but welcome to seasonal creep, please buy a 12-foot skeleton before you check out. So long as we’re on the subject, here I present to you the big board showing the seven “aspiring” Wild Card teams plus the AL West-leading Astros, since it won’t take much for them to find themselves viewing the playoff picture through that lens:
| Team | W-L | HOU | MIN | TEX | TOR | CLE | DET | BAL | SEA | Intra |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOU | 64-63 | — | 2-4 (0,0) | 9-4 (0,0) | 3-3 (0,0) | 4-2 (0,0) | 5-2 (0,0) | 1-5 (0,0) | 2-9 (0,2) | 20-21 |
| MIN | 63-65 | 4-2 (0,0) | — | 3-0 (3,0) | 4-3 (0,0) | 6-4 (3,0) | 5-2 (3,3) | 3-3 (0,0) | 2-4 (0,0) | 19-18 |
| TEX | 62-65 | 4-9 (0,0) | 0-3 (0,3) | — | 4-0 (3,0) | 4-2 (0,0) | 2-4 (0,0) | 4-2 (0,0) | 7-3 (0,3) | 18-25 |
| TOR | 62-66 | 3-3 (0,0) | 3-4 (0,0) | 0-4 (0,3) | — | 2-1 (0,3) | 2-1 (3,0) | 4-3 (3-3) | 1-2 (3,0) | 21-21 |
| CLE | 61-66 | 2-4 (0,0) | 4-6 (0,3) | 2-4 (0,0) | 1-2 (3,0) | — | 7-2 (4,0) | 3-1 (0,3) | 4-3 (0,0) | 19-17 |
| DET | 61-66 | 2-5 (0,0) | 2-5 (3,3) | 4-2 (0,0) | 1-2 (0,3) | 2-7 (0,4) | — | 2-4 (0,0) | 4-2 (0,0) | 13-22 |
| BAL | 61-66 | 5-1 (0,0) | 3-3 (0,0) | 2-4 (0,0) | 3-4 (3,3) | 1-3 (3,0) | 4-2 (0,0) | — | 4-3 (0,0) | 15-20 |
| SEA | 60-67 | 9-2 (2,0) | 4-2 (0,0) | 3-7 (3,0) | 2-1 (0,3) | 3-4 (0,0) | 2-4 (0,0) | 3-4 (0,0) | — | 20-13 |
The tables show each team’s head-to-head record against the others, the number of games remaining between those two teams at home and on the road, and their overall intradivisional records — enough information to cover the first two steps of the tiebreaker process. I didn’t have room for teams’ intraleague records, but I’ll present them here within a lightning-round summary of where they stand.
Astros (48-43 intraleague): The AL West leaders have just two games remaining against any of these seven other teams, a pair against the Mariners, to whom they’ve already lost their season series. They’ve won their season series against the Rangers, but in the event of a three-way tie with Texas and Seattle atop the division, they currently have the lowest winning percentage (.458, 11-13) of the trio, behind the Rangers (.478, 11-12) and Mariners (.571, 12-9).
Rangers (42-47): The good news is that the Rangers have already clinched four season series against these other teams. The bad news is that their .472 intraleague winning percentage is the lowest here. Note the overlapping tiebreakers in the AL West: the Astros won the season series over the Rangers, who won the season series over the Mariners, who won the season series over the Astros.
Twins (47-39): The Twins are the only team here above .500 in terms of both intradivision play (.514) and intraleague play (.547), with the latter mark the highest of any team here.
Blue Jays (40-43): The Blue Jays have the greatest control of their destiny within this cluster, with a total of 18 games remaining against the other seven teams, and a tie for the most such games at home (nine, as many as the Twins).
Guardians (40-43): Cleveland’s .528 intradivision winning percentage is the second-highest here, but an 18-11 May is the team’s only month above .500.
Tigers (44-47): The Tigers have the lowest intradivision winning percentage of any team here (.371), they’ve already lost their season series to the Guardians, and they trail their season series against the Twins. From among the teams here, they do have the highest run differential of (+82), Pythagorean winning percentage (.570) and BaseRuns winning percentage (.564). In other words, they’re a major league-high 11 wins off their projected pace. With two pitchers who were key parts of the run prevention end of things now relocated to the NL West, they’re less likely to close that gap.
Orioles (46-45): The division is a problem, as the Orioles not only have a .429 winning percentage within the AL East but trail the season series with the Blue Jays, though they do have six games remaining against them. Like the Guardians, they have just one month above .500, having gone 15-8 in July. It’s tough to take them seriously here; note that their playoff odds are the lowest within this group.
Mariners (43-46): Things look bleak for the Mariners right now, and with just eight games remaining agains the other teams here, they have relatively little control over their destiny. However, they do hold a few cards that could help in certain scenarios: They’ve secured the tiebreaker advantage over the Astros; they have the lead in the three-way head-to-head with Houston and Texas; and they have the highest intradivision winning percentage (.606) of any team here. None of that will matter if they don’t play better, however.
This jumble of teams isn’t particularly appealing from an aesthetic standpoint, but as The Bandwagon’s Zach Crizer pointed out earlier this week, Manfred and friends are plenty happy to have found this particular sweet spot. Shifting the focus from the battle for the fourth- or fifth-best record to the sixth-best tends to guarantee the most competitiveness down the stretch, which is something to remember as MLB wages its propaganda war against the players union with regards to the upcoming Collective Bargaining Agreement. You want competitive balance? You’re soaking in it.
Brooklyn-based Jay Jaffe is a senior writer for FanGraphs, the author of The Cooperstown Casebook (Thomas Dunne Books, 2017) and the creator of the JAWS (Jaffe WAR Score) metric for Hall of Fame analysis. He founded the Futility Infielder website (2001), was a columnist for Baseball Prospectus (2005-2012) and a contributing writer for Sports Illustrated (2012-2018). He has been a recurring guest on MLB Network and a member of the BBWAA since 2011, and a Hall of Fame voter since 2021. Follow him on BlueSky @jayjaffe.bsky.social.
I’ll say something nice about the AL West as pathetic as it is it doesn’t hold a candle to the AL West back in 1994. I’ve got nothing to say nice about the third wild card race of truly terrible teams.
There shouldn’t be a third wild-card. The play-in game was much more exciting, while a third WC gives the dilution of regular-season product. It feels paradoxical that more teams are theoretically able to make the playoffs, *and* it feels ugly.
I would argue there shouldn’t be a second wild card. The first one (with three division winners) verifiably solved the 1993 Giants (103-59; second in NL West) problem, but beyond that we’re just adding worse teams. Baseball has the best regular season; embrace it.
But since we’re stuck with it, what if we institute a rule that if a team under .500 makes the playoffs, that team can’t play the games and all under .500 teams have to reimburse the league for the lost television and ticket revenue? Now that’s an incentive for teams like the Tigers and Orioles to go for it at the deadline instead of trade players away.
Some of us don’t even think the 1993 Giants was a problem that needed to be solved. It was one of the most amazing pennant* races of my life!
Go back 33 years with me: summer 1993. Clinton, pre-Lewinsky, is not asking, nor telling. The USSR has been gone less than 2 years–the Cold War now looking iced over. Jurassic Park (the first one!) and the Fugitive dominate the box office. And the defending NL Champion Atlanta Braves are about to play 0.754 baseball–and need to.
Midsummer, the Giants are cruising, having added pre-roid Barry Bonds in the offseason they took over first place on May 2 and didn’t look back. They will go on to hold the division lead for over four months, stretching to a commanding 10-game advantage by late July with 65 games left. But then the Braves go unconscious at 49-16 down the stretch. San Fran doesn’t even play poorly (38-27), but Atlanta just won’t lose. Everyone contributes. Maddux goes 10-2, 1.76 ERA, and Fred McGriff, added in a July trade, replaces Sid Bream and goes nuts: 19 HR and 55 RBI for Atlanta–the absolute prototype of a deadline deal that fans love to see. How that lineup changed once Crime Dog went in the middle! The uncertain Pendleton / Gant / Justice / Bream jumble turned into Gant / McGriff / Justice / Pendleton. And Atlanta ended up needing every single point of OPS that revamped lineup delivered.
By September 16, the one-mighty Giants are now four games behind Atlanta, having dropped eight straight. Watching this day by day was excruciating: they can’t lose again, can they? Then suddenly the Giants snap out of it. Beginning September 17, they go 14–2 over the next sixteen games and somehow enter Game 162 tied again. Atlanta, playing first, won its finale, so San Francisco needed to beat the Dodgers in LA to force a one-game playoff, which would have been played in Candlestick.
Baker gives the ball to 21-yr-old Salomon Torres for this critical start, just his 8th of his career, since the Giants’ frontline starters were spent. The ’93 Giants rotation was Swift and Burkett, both 20-game winners, and then a lot of duct tape. The two studs had pitched Games 159 and 160, so neither was available for #162. Now the failure of the Giants to solve their big weakness at the trade deadline, a reliable third starter, became starkly revealed, especially in contrast to how the Braves had solved theirs. We fans get to experience not just the satisfaction of watching the tactical decisions on the field but the impact of strategic decisions in the front office. At the deadline, Torres reportedly could have brought Dennis Martinez or Greg Harris, but the Giants weren’t willing to part with him. Other starters were on the market: Tim Belcher, Sid Fernandez, perhaps Andy Benes or Chuck Finley. The Giants kept Torres. And now it’s all down to him.
But the Giants are feeling good, because in a series of must win games, they’ve taken down LA’s top starters in order: Candiotti, Ramon Martinez, Hershiser. Now all they just have to beat the 5th starter, Kevin Gross. And the Giants have been chewing up Gross-like starters all year.
But Dodgers are in spoiler mode against their old rivals, with Lasorda expressly reminding his team that it was the Giants who had knocked out LA in 1991 (and then crowing about it over the PA after!). The game’s tight for a few innings, but it eventually becomes a slowly unfolding disaster for San Fran. Rookie Mike Piazza unloads with two homers and gets a standing ovation. Ex-Giant Cory Snyder tacks one on for good measure. In the end, the race had it all: Cy Young Maddux for Atlanta, MVP Bonds for the Giants, ROY Piazza for the spoiler Dodgers. And every single day mattered.
We don’t get that kind of drama anymore. Pre-WC baseball could have exquisite pennant* races that would go on for weeks if not months, with every single game being critical.
What a loss it would have been for all of us if all of that spectacular baseball theater had just been for seeding, and we’d known for weeks who would be in the postseason. Take 2021 for example. By 9/15, we knew the Dodgers and Giants would both make the postseason. The Giants had 18 games left when they clinched at least a Wild Card; the Dodgers clinched the following night. Yet those 18 games produced a magnificent race in which the Giants and Dodgers eventually won 213 games between them and finished one game apart. We still got the competition. What we didn’t get was the urgency. Back and forth jockeying for position, not for survival. Yawn. And there are plenty more examples.
The 1993 Giants were not a problem to be solved. They are a relic of a better time to be a baseball fan.
*You know what I mean.
I REALLY hate that the 1 seed in the AL will play the much tougher 4-5 winner and the 2 seed gets to play the .500 3-6 winner. This is so beyond stupid.
The 3 seed division winner can have the home field appropriately in the wild card round, but for God’s sake, reseed them after that round.
Yeah, and it being such a naked marketing attempt at replicating March Madness is bizarre
Like, let it go MLB
Well, March Madness is looking at expanding too….
In 7 of the last 14 full seasons, the top WC in the NL had more wins than the worst division winner (5/14 for the AL). 3 of those 7 times the second NL WC team had more wins than the worst division winner (4/5 for the NL). It’s really pretty clear that to Manfred this is a feature, not a bug. I agree with your take, let the division winner have a bit of a boon by playing the first series at home but don’t continue to give them advantages after that just because they’re the only team with 80 wins in their division
This is the baseball equivalent of the Senate, and I hate both of them.
Are we trying to do something useful (a playoff that rewards good teams/pass laws) or are we trying to reward small market losers with faux parity for financial reasons?!
I’m sure it’s a mathematical calculation, since all the owners care about is money.
I think it was Bill Simmons that once said that the #1 seed in each league should be able to pick the team they play against in the playoffs, then the #2 picks, etc.
I don’t see the downside to this, and I think it would add a lot of excitement.
…. and if “Manfred and his friends” get their way after the inevitable expansion to 32 teams to copycat the NFL with 8 – 4 team divisions this will come up more and more often. After expansion MLB needs to go with 4 – 8 team divisions. Division winners get the bye. #2 hosts #3 in a best of three series to speed that series timeline up. Division championship the best of five as it is now. AL and NL CS best of seven and WS best of seven. This would restore the regular season prestige and value in winning your division again Eight four team micro divisions ….. just save this article and repost it every 2 or 3 years when this comes up.
There are a lot of things wrong with MLB ownership and their leadership but the problem isn’t that they’re planning to expand. The problem is that they aren’t expanding enough. A 12 team playoff might be okay with 32 teams, and you could go even bigger if you got up to 36. Three six-team divisions would be a great setup. But as usual MLB would rather try to wring as much revenue out of current fans as they can rather than find or develop new ones.
If MLB cared about growing revenue instead of reducing costs, they would have spent the last 20 years planning and implementing an international division or divisions. Baseball is the sport where a global league is most practical. Instead, the NFL will do it first.
They might be rich, but they aren’t perfect, and I’m sure they have reasons for not having done this, whether they make sense now or not.
You’re not thinking big enough. 1 32-team division, everyone plays each other 5 times. Then for each win, you get a ball in the playoff lottery. Pick 8 teams, best record drafts an opponent until you have your matchups. Home run derby (pitchers only) to determine to home field advantage. Ties at the end of 9 innings are broken by a hot-dog eating contest. Control person for team with worst record has to sit in a dunk tank at next year’s All Star game.
It’s about as likely.
God I hate that they might go to eight four-team divisions and I hate that most of the online comments I’ve seen about expansion seem to be in favor of that structure. It’s good to reduce travel, but I’d rather see the occasional six-game series instead. Four eight-team divisions would be great IMO, but doesn’t seem likely.
If not the outright goal, this is the obvious endpoint of allowing more teams in the playoffs.
The AL teams could also build better teams so they aren’t getting destroyed in interleague games, which is the real reason this mess is happening.
There are only four AL teams with winning records against the NL this year, and three of them are in the AL East. The *only* team in that pit of mediocrity in the AL West and AL Central (and Orioles and Blue Jays) that has a winning record against the NL is the Rangers at 20-19.
If the AL was closer in performance to the NL, then probably close to half of that eight team group Jay talks about in that article would be above .500. We wouldn’t be having this conversation then. But most of those teams just aren’t that good, with the one possible exception being the Astros whose entire pitching staff got hurt and now is (slightly) healthier, enough to not give up 6 runs per game on average like they were doing at the beginning of the year.
It’s easy to blame “parity” but that’s not the problem. The problem is that a lot of AL teams had flawed theories of what their roster was capable of. Some of these errors are understandable (Blue Jays, Mariners) and others are not (Royals, Tigers, Guardians, Rangers).
The Tigers TRIED to spend- Signed Valdez, Kyle Finnegan (who pitched great for them last year) & Kenley Jansen.
They have just had a combo of terrible injury luck with SP, where it somehow hasn’t hurt them that bad & in the OF where EVERY OF has hit the IL at least 1x & the 4 late game relievers (Jansen, Finnegan, Vest, Holton), all of whom had been good for multiple years pitch terrible, esp in high leverage moments.
They’ve blown 19 saves & lost 29 games where they were ahead in the 7th inning or later.
Maybe Jansen finally hitting the wall was foreseeable, but, it’s not like any of the other closers that were FA (Helsley, Fairbanks, Williams, Diaz) have been any better.
I am of two minds about the Tigers.
On one hand, I thought what they did in the offseason was woefully inadequate and mostly half-measures. Torkelson was definitely not even a medium term piece for them and likely not even a short-term one, Jansen had some real warning flags with his K rate in 2025, Finnegan was never going to replicate his 2025, two thirds of the outfield had serious question marks, the infield defense looked bad, etc.
But on the other hand they were also very careful not to do much that could jeopardize their very bright future. And from that perspective they’re fine, with the exception of them having to pay gobs of money to Framber Valdez. I don’t know that I blame them for not going all in either. They’re not like the Rangers who have this aging core they really needed to supplement, or the Guardians who seem content to churn out .500 seasons forever.
The Tigers were criticized for not doing enough to bolster the team for their last run with Skubal, even after signing Valdez. The defense of their plan is that, as Jay said, they are 11 wins off their baseruns pace and there may be no way to plan for that–though the better the team is, the more bad sequencing luck they can endure.
Going by BaseRuns doesn’t make the AL look much better or justify the plans of any of the other teams sadtrombone was talking about. The Tigers would be the #2 seed, 6.5 games up at the White Sox who would be a barely respectable third wild card at 65-61. But the AL West would be even more of a tire fire, with the Mariners leading the division at 61-66, two or three games ahead of the other non-Athletics teams.
That would be the closest race for qualification; the three AL East teams would be fighting for the division, the Braves would be 1.5 behind the Marlin for the division and in a tight race for seeding with the Cubs and Pirates as wild cards. Every other team would be at least 4.5 out of a spot.
I lean towards the latter. With the knowledge that they do have payroll constraints, they did about as much as they could within constraints.
Signed JV & Valdez to give a rotation of Skubal/Mize/Valdez/Flaherty/JV/Melton/Montero & maybe Reese Olson.
Signed Finnegan & Jansen to go with Vest & Holton, giving them a decent back 4 on paper.
Dingler was set at C
Tork was coming off a 30 HR, 2+WAR season. Easy to say now they should have replaced him, but, he was cheap & had a good 2025.
Torres was re-signed for 2B.
SS/3B was a Baez/McGonigle/McKinstry mix. Baez has a big contract & was decent in 2025. McKinstry was an AS in 2025. McGonigle was a top 5 prospect.
Greene in LF
Meadows in CF with Max Clark on the way, you’re NOT signing another CF.
Perez/Vierling platoon in RF, along with Carpenter.
PLUS Colt Keith to mix in at 1B/2B/3B/DH.
Maybe a little weak at CF, RF, SS, but, you’re NOT signing a SS with Baez. Not signing a CF with Clark coming. I guess maybe they could have signed an RF, but, that is hindsight.
Who would expect ALL of Perez,Vierling, Meadows, Carpenter to miss most of the year AND now Greene is hurt.
& even with that, they have the 3rd best run differential in the AL. They have just been terribly unclutch, both offense & relievers. Very few comebacks, a bunch of blown saves/leads.
Sometimes it’s just not your year.
In high leverage situations, they are:
Hitting- 26th in wRC+ (8th in wRC+ in all situations)
Pitching- 29th in pitcher ERA (10th in overall ERA)
It really is that simple. Decent team that for whatever reason is very unclutch.
To be fair, the AL won the interleague matchup as recently as last year (367-353). And for a long time the AL dominated, winning every year from 2004-2017.
I did always presume this was strongly related to having a full-time DH on the roster.
Also because at that point the big spending, money-printing behemoths were in the AL East. Took quite a while for the Cubs, Giants, and Dodgers to unlock their potential.
Not sure that’s true. The NL won 4 of the first 7 years, sometimes by lopsided margins. And they began winning again in 2018, before they adopted the DH.
Throw in the fact that the DH only applied to half the games, and most AL teams didn’t have a full time DH, and I’m not sure how much explanatory power it has.
A lot of people say that, but it changed before the DH became universal. The real reason is that most teams in the NL weren’t using data very much until the mid-2010s. There were several sabermetric teams in the AL trying to fight off the Yankees and made the switch to using data, most notably the Athletics and Red Sox, but the Guardians and Rays were also early adopters of using data. I think you can give some credit to Blue Jays and Rangers, though not to the same extent.
Other than the Cardinals, no one else in the NL was notably using data or even using a supercomputer. That was the real reason the AL dominated the NL for such a long time. They were simply better at team building from using more modern techniques.
Yes, but with the third WC there isn’t much incentive to do so. If you predict a sea of .500 teams, all in playoff contention, with your team currently being one of them, you may well decide to play things conservatively.
I don’t have a problem with a sea of .500 teams because that implies some are a little above that. But a sea of .485 teams is another matter entirely.
The Tigers’ intra division record is why Cleveland and Minnesota are in this article
So it’s bad that lots of fans have reason to care? Want to go back to only like three groups of fans being interested?
Yeah, as an outsider to American sports I don’t see the need for consternation here. It’s not like the playoffs are about crowning the best team anyway, that’s what the league standings are for. It’s just a fun post-season tournament and if more fans get to enjoy that, and enjoy the idea of it as August and September crawl along, what’s the problem?
Because American fans don’t care at all about the regular season standings. The World series was, at its inception, about crowning the best team. Fundamental difference between the baseball and european soccer.
Szymborski has a good analogy about cheapening access to the playoffs: he likens it to pro wrestling proliferating title belts. Once the fans caught on that everyone gets one they stopped caring.
To take it a step further, once fans realise that “cindarella” championships are happening every year, as short playoff series are very close to coinflips, their interest risks dropping off there as well.
It’s also worth noting that there is little to no evidence that opening up postseason access increases total interest during the regular season. It just redistributes.
More like Non-Competitive Balance.
Since the schedule started having more inter-league games in 2023 the NL has been +38 Wins, +48 Wins, -14 Wins, and +49 Wins so far this year.
All of the top four and six of the top eight teams in Wins since 2023 are in the National League…LAD 368, MIL 360, PHI 351, ATL 343, (NYY 341), SDP 333, (TBR 332), CHC 332.
On the flip side the AL has four of the bottom six teams in Wins since 2023…KCR 278, (WAS 269), LAA 258, ATH 244, CHW 228, (COL 213).
These things go in cycles. Dodgers are the current beasts, but Yankees and Red Sox had their turns within last couple decades. Of those top 8 teams, PHI and SD are probably on the decline, and of the bottom 8, CHW is already coming out of the rebuild, WAS is on the upswing too. I don’t see any structural reason that NL will dominate for an extended time. They are mostly helped by having the one “superteam” in the sport right now.
They need to change the seeding in the wild card round. Right now it is far better to be the third-place wild card team and play a potentially mediocre division winner than be a secondor first-place wild card team.
Better yet, just do away with divisions and simply seed the best 6 records.
For those who argue that the small-market teams in the central deserve an automatic bid, spare a thought for the Baltimore Orioles, who are the most disadvantaged team in the current setup
Hey Jay, if it makes you feel better, if there weren’t a strike in 1994, the Braves would have found a way to come back and win the division and it would be 15 in a row instead of 14. Source: trust me bro.
Yup. The 2022 Braves were 5.5 games back after their 114th game, and they didn’t let that stop them from leaving the Mets dead in a ditch. There’s a reason the Expos never won a title; they were fundamentally losers.
THANK YOU. MLB may not like to acknowledge it, but the 1994 season happened, shortened though it were. If they want to play-pretend that 1994 didn’t happen, all the players’ stats from that season need to be totally erased as well.
11 consecutive division titles from 1995-2005 is still an amazing, awesome run and they don’t have to fudge the numbers to extend it.
The stats for completed games in a shortened season count because those contests were played to conclusion. The division races in 1994 weren’t played to a conclusion, and no one won them. (Note that back when we had games that were replayed from the start due to weather interruption, the stats from the abandoned games did not count.) The Braves had 14 consecutive division titles; every single year that a division title was awarded between 1991 and 2005, they won.
Go Expos!
I for one would suggest that we rescind one of the wild card spots from the AL and give it to the 7th best NL team.
Not only because the NL teams are better, but because the ‘contenders’ for that final WC position in the AL are comprised of a bunch of teams content to half -ss their way to a playoff spot
Penny-wise, pound-foolish. Of course, if you’re already watching your team, you’ll still do it. But the rich are about squeezing dollars, then moving on to other ventures when their ideas fail.
How did the Blue Jays’ playoff odds increase by 17.3%, if they’re only at 16.9% now. You mean the had a negative playoff percentage before that?
No, I apparently mis-reported the increase. The Blue Jays’ odds were at 4.8% as of the night before the deadline, and 16.9% as of this morning (they’re up to 21.4% with this afternoon’s win, Seattle’s loss, and other developments today). Their 12.1% increase was still the AL’s highest.
When you increase a percentage by another percentage, you don’t add the two percentages together
You mean “uncompetitive balance.”
All of the teams competing for the 6th spot in the AL are currently projected for 80.5 or less wins, but what are the odds that the team that actually makes it in that spot (or wins the AL West) is under .500? Even with none of them projected to beat that mark, surely its more likely than not that one of them goes on a “run” and hits 83-84 wins, right?
That question popped up in Dan Szymborski’s chat yesterday, I think he said the odds of a sub .500 team making it were about 25%
Just yesterday, I was thinking about the Jays chances of making the playoffs and how the last 30 games were going to play out. Since it’s known among Jays fans that the last 10 series are all vs “weak” teams, there’s some hopium and copium going on that is helping out the fans.
I thought I’d look at the other competing teams last 30 games to see if the Jays weak schedule was going to help them.
The Verdict? All the teams have nearly similarly weak schedules, because all the teams suck. It was a sea of mediocrity. There wasn’t any team that stood out as having a tough finish, with only a couple facing even two difficult opponents. Ironically, the most difficult final schedule belonged to the Rays, who are already all but guaranteed to make it.
Hopium was achieved, because the Jays have won 7 consecutive series including against the Rays who have utterly owned them this year, which bodes well for upcoming Orioles games and so on. The future’s looking bright, so flip down those shades.
We could see Phillies over Dodgers in WC series and Rangers over Red Sox in ALCS.
I’m not seeing massive interest in these playoffs