Barring any atrocious September collapses, the Houston Astros and Texas Rangers’ AL West battle is the only ongoing division race that could end with only one team making the postseason.
Whether you believe the Astros or Rangers deserve a playoff berth apparently depends on their final record. The two Texas clubs entered Monday tied atop the AL West at 65-66, making them two of only three playoff teams with a losing record; the Rangers and Guardians are tied for the final AL Wild Card seed.
If you’ve been around Major League Baseball long enough, then you know this isn’t the first time we’re having these conversations on the eve of September, and it never ceases to get tiring.Â
The Texas Rangers or Houston Astros could win the AL West with a losing record
Ah, the annual pearl-clutching about how a playoff team with a losing record is just terrible for the sport. What better way to start getting excited about a postseason which will have no shortage of elite stars and future Hall of Famers?Â
Major League Baseball’s playoff system has always been flawed, even going back to the pre-divisional era. Why should a 100-win National League team miss out on the World Series when the AL pennant winner only had 91 wins? The 1969 addition of Eastern and Western divisions only made things worse, and the initial Wild Card format had its own problems.
Let’s use the 2008 season as an example, when the 89-win Yankees missed the postseason entirely. However, as then-owner Hank Steinbrenner pointed out, the 84-win Dodgers earned a playoff spot because they won the NL West. Actually, the Mets (89-73), Astros (86-75), and Cardinals (86-76) should have been the furious ones, seeing as they played in the same league but didn’t win the NL’s only Wild Card spot.
The expanded Wild Card system is designed to prevent those issues, and it’s admittedly imperfect. But we should rarely see an instance of, say, an 88-win team failing to earn the No. 6 seed whereas an 83-win division champion would receive home-field advantage in the Wild Card Series.
Has an MLB team ever reached the postseason with a losing record?
As of August 2026, no MLB team has ever made the playoffs with a losing record in a non-shortened season. The 2005 San Diego Padres, who won the NL West at 82-80, own the lowest winning percentage by a playoff team; the 1973 Mets went 82-79, so their .509 winning percentage barely beat out the Padres’ .506 mark.Â
Major League Baseball adopted the present five-team division format in 1998, though the AL West only had four teams and the NL Central had six; that changed in 2013 when the Astros moved to the American League. So in nearly 30 years of the modern division system, the only time we saw teams earn a playoff spot with a losing record came in a 60-game shortened season.
The same holds true for the NFL, too. Only five teams have reached the postseason with a losing record in a non-shortened season. Should the 2010 Seahawks, who won the NFC West at 7-9, have earned a playoff spot over the 10-win Giants? That’s how the cookie crumbles when you separate teams by division.Â
Besides, all of this is assuming that the Astros or Rangers even finish below .500, and you know what they say about assuming. Well, except for the Pirates fans who assumed that Paul Skenes would be a dominant phenom forever. Those poor souls.
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