With just a few days left in the regular season, the AL West might make a particularly mediocre kind of history.
After Tuesday night’s games, the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros were tied for first place at 78-79. No full-season division champion has ever had a losing record.
In fact, no team has made the postseason with a sub-.500 record, unless you count a trio of participants from years the playoffs were temporarily expanded: In the 2020 season shortened by the COVID-19 pandemic, Milwaukee and Houston were both 29-31 and made the postseason.
In 1981, the Kansas City Royals went 50-53 overall â but they were the AL West’s top team in the post-strike second half, meaning they got in.
Then in 1994, the Rangers led a woeful AL West at 52-62 when the players’ strike ended the season. Every team in the division was under .500 and no postseason was played.
MLB expanded its postseason to 12 teams in 2022, raising the likelihood that a sub-.500 team would sneak into October at some point. Just a few weeks ago, it looked like the American League could have several clubs with losing marks in this year’s playoffs. The AL Central’s Cleveland Guardians and Chicago White Sox have since reached 81 wins, so that won’t happen. But the AL West title race could still yield a losing team.
In honor of that, here are 10 of the weakest teams to make the postseason, listed in chronological order with their records and run differentials in mind. Note that some of them went on lengthy postseason runs â so don’t count out the Rangers or Astros just yet.
Record: 82-79 (first in NL East)
Run differential: 20
Postseason: Beat Cincinnati 3-2 in NL Championship Series, lost to Oakland 4-3 in World Series
The rallying cry was “Ya gotta believe!” from reliever Tug McGraw. It wasn’t easy when New York was in last place after an Aug. 30 loss, but the Mets went 21-8 the rest of the way to win the division by 1 1/2 games. Tom Seaver (19-10, 2.08 ERA, 18 complete games) was still at the peak of his powers, and New York held the Reds to eight runs in five games in the NLCS â a series best remembered for a brawl involving Bud Harrelson and Pete Rose. The Mets led the World Series 3-2 and had Seaver starting Game 6, but they couldn’t close out the Athletics.
Record: 84-78 (first in AL West)
Run differential: minus-13
Postseason: Lost to Detroit 3-0 in ALCS
The Royals were 11 games under .500 in the middle of July, but they did enough to win the AL West. George Brett hit .284 â his worst average in a 14-year span from 1975-88 â and he was one of just two All-Stars on the team. The other was Dan Quisenberry, who had 44 saves while throwing 129 1/3 innings. He finished second in the Cy Young race behind fellow reliever Willie Hernández of the Tigers. Although Kansas City took the division almost by default in ’84, the Royals improved to 91 wins the following year and won the World Series.
Record: 85-77 (first in AL West)
Run differential: minus-20
Postseason: Beat Detroit 4-1 in ALCS, beat St. Louis 4-3 in World Series
Frank Viola was the star o
