The AL West Is MLB’s Last, Best Hope for a Great Division Race

A prospective pitchers duel turned into a rout in Texas on Wednesday, as the Houston Astros’ bats spoiled the first matchup between starting pitchers Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer. Yordan Alvarez clubbed a two-run homer in the first inning, Michael Brantley added a solo shot in the second, and José Abreu launched a grand slam in the third, chasing Scherzer early and adding an exclamation point to a three-game statement from the defending champions.

It was that kind of series for the Texas Rangers, who allowed 13, 14, and 12 runs across three losses, as well as at least five home runs in each game, and possibly lost All-Star outfielder Adolis García to a knee injury. After leading the AL West for most of the season, the Rangers have now fallen three games back in the division race, behind both Houston and Seattle. Their odds of winning the division have dropped, according to FanGraphs, from 57 percent on August 15 to just 4.5 percent now.

Yet even that deficit—Texas’s worst of the season—makes the AL West an outlier relative to the rest of MLB. Across the other five divisions, only one second-place team is within three games of the leader. Other than the Rangers, no other third-place team retains even a half-percent chance to win the division, according to FanGraphs playoff odds.

The prospect of a truly competitive three-team race all the way to the end of the season was more likely before the three-game rout at Globe Life Field this week. MLB’s Sarah Langs noted that this was just the third time in the divisional era—and the first since 1980—that a division entered September with just a single game of separation from first place to third.

But as the Rangers regroup following their debacle against the Astros with a much-needed visit from the MLB-worst Athletics, neutral fans can still root for a three-team tussle until the season’s final weekend. The truest, most magnificent manifestation of the dream of a three-team tie is no longer possible, now that MLB’s playoff structure has done away with tiebreaker games and Team Entropy is dead. But the possibility of a photo finish still presents outrageous fun, adding a layer of complexity to scoreboard-watching down the stretch. And if these three AL West contenders all remain within arm’s reach for another couple of weeks, fans will be treated to an end-of-season spectacle, as Seattle will end its schedule with 10 consecutive games against the Rangers, Astros, and Rangers again.

Unfortunately, as the Rangers’ current slide suggests, most races that look like three-team frenzies with a month or less to go don’t actually maintain that intensity. In the wild-card era, 20 previous divisions (excluding 2020) had three teams at the top separated by five games or fewer through the games of September 6. But only five of those 20 divisions finished with the third-place team that close to the top:

• 2003 NL Central: Cubs won, Astros one back, Cardinals three back
• 2007 NL West: Diamondbacks won, Rockies and Padres both one back, leading to Matt Holliday’s controversial dash home
• 2012 AL East: Yankees won, Orioles two back, Rays five back
• 2014 AL Central: Tigers won, Royals one back, Cleveland five back
• 2016 AL East: Red Sox won, Orioles and Blue Jays both four back

Examples from the past two seasons illustrate how potential three-team tangles usually unravel before Game 162. Just last year, the Guardians, Twins, and White Sox were all within three games of each other after September 6. Then Cleveland went 22-6 the rest of the way while Minnesota and Chicago struggled, giving the Guardians a double-digit division win. In 2021, Atlanta led the Phillies by just one game and the Mets by 3.5 after September 6; Atlanta went 16-8 the rest of the way while the two chasers lost more games than they won.

That’s not to say three-team races never happen. In the 27 seasons of the wild-card era (again, excluding 2020), the third-place team in a division has finished within five games of the top 14 times—though many of those cases weren’t really as contested as the final standings suggest. This group of 14 divisions includes the 2000 AL East, for instance, but the 2000 Yankees led by at least three games every day from the end of July until the final series of the season; even a brutal 3-15 finish couldn’t threaten their lead (or their ultimate chance to win the World Series). It also includes the 2015 NL Central, but the 2015 Cardinals led every day from mid-April on, including by three-plus games from the first game out of the All-Star break up to the final day of the season.

While it happens on occasion—in that 2007 NL West race, all three teams entered the final series of the season with a chance to claim the division crown—it’s still extremely rare for three-team races to last all the way to the finish line. Overall, the average third-place team in the wild-card era has finished 14 games back of first.

In this year’s AL West, the Rangers are clearly the most likely team to lose pace and fall behind. That’s partly because of their current position and partly because of their current trajectory: The Rangers led the Astros by 3.5 games and the Mariners by 7.5 after beating the Angels on August 15, but have posted an MLB-worst 4-15 record since.

The decline of the Rangers’ offense, which led the majors in runs at the All-Star break, hasn’t helped; nor has the absence of rookie All-Star Josh Jung, due to a broken thumb. But Texas’s true problem is a pitching staff that, since August 15, has been worth a mind-boggling 1.7 wins below replacement, according to FanGraphs.

Through August 15, the Rangers staff ranked fourth in WAR. But over the past three weeks, it’s 28th in ERA (6.35), 30th in FIP (6.12), 25th in walk rate (10.2 percent), and 30th in home run rate (2.22 per nine innings). Six Rangers have made starts in that span, and all of them have an ERA of 4.50 or higher; trade-deadline acquisitions Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery are key culprits, while early-season FIP-beater Dane Dunning has stopped defying the odds and Nathan Eovaldi’s return from injury went disastrously on Tuesday. And if anything, the bullpen has been even worse, with a collective 7.24 ERA and 7.03 FIP since mid-August.

Much of that damage came just this week, at the hands of the Astros, who are rounding into their typical juggernaut form as they seek their sixth division title in seven seasons. Jose Altuve hit five homers in this week’s series against Texas and is now tied for his best-ever season, by wRC+. Altuve and Alvarez have missed significant time, but they both rank among the majors’ top hitters among players with at least 300 plate appearances. Astros teammates Chas McCormick and Kyle Tucker join them near the top of this leaderboard.

Finally, Seattle is the surprise entrant in the AL West race, thanks to a 28-11 record since a 50-50 start. The Mariners were mired in mediocrity, even going so far as to soft-sell at the deadline, with closer Paul Sewald dealt to Arizona, but Julio Rodríguez’s incandescent August sparked the team’s rapid rise up the standings.

Seattle boasts perhaps the most well-rounded roster of this trio. The Mariners’ pitching staff ranks first in the majors in ERA, second in FIP, and second in fWAR; both the rotation (fourth in fWAR) and the bullpen (fourth) have excelled. Luis Castillo, Logan Gilbert, George Kirby, and rookie Bryce Miller would form a stellar playoff rotation if Seattle gets that far, and though Sewald is gone, Andrés Muñoz, Matt Brash, and Justin Topa still form a terrific trio at the end of games.

The lineup is a bit more top-heavy, but no less effective as of late. Since the start of August, the Mariners and Astros are tied for the majors’ best offense, with dueling 139 wRC+ marks that mean these two teams have both spent the past month-plus hitting like Tucker. It’s not just Julio: Cal Raleigh adds a strong bat behind the plate, Mike Ford is crushing as a platoon DH, and leadoff hitter J.P. Crawford surprisingly ranks second among all qualified shortstops in wRC+, ahead of a host of better-known and more celebrated names.

Still, the Astros hold the advantage down the stretch, if only because they enjoy by far the easiest remaining schedule of these three teams. Houston still has nine games left against the woeful Royals and A’s; the Rangers and Mariners have only three such games apiece. Seattle also still has series against the Rays and Dodgers before its final 10-game gauntlet—though the Mariners hold the tiebreaker over Houston, thanks to head-to-head record, if the two current leaders finish with the same record.

(One of the players Texas traded for reliever Aroldis Chapman earlier this summer, by the way, was Cole Ragans, who’s transformed into the best starter in baseball since he joined the Royals rotation. Maybe he can help out his former team by shutting down Houston in a couple of the upcoming Astros-Royals games, so that the trade isn’t a total loss for the Rangers.)

Even as some separation appears in the standings, the stakes remain high. Because the AL West champion is all but certain to finish ahead of the AL Central champion—FanGraphs gives the latter division just a 0.4 percent chance to land a top-two seed—it will very likely receive a first-round playoff bye. Meanwhile, the AL West runner-up will likely have to win a best-of-three series as the road team against either Baltimore or Tampa Bay, and the third-place AL West team might miss the playoffs entirely, because the Blue Jays are right in the wild-card mix, too.

Two-team races are a dance; three-team races are a chaotic mess. (To say nothing of four-plus-team races, like the current muddle that defines the battle for the NL’s third wild card.) So after an anticlimactic series in Texas this week, and particularly an anticlimactic meeting of three-time Cy Young winners on Wednesday, neutral fans can only hope that Texas regains its footing and keeps in touch with the top two, so the final week and a half of September can feature as much drama as possible in the most compelling race of the 2023 regular season.