This seemed inevitable from the moment Major League Baseball expanded its postseason to 12 teams. And now it will come to pass: A non-winning team will make the playoffs for the first time in a full season.
The final day of the regular season has MLB choosin’ Texas for its final division winner, and the pickings are slim: The 80-81 Houston Astros, who have already fired their general manager, or the 80-81 Rangers, who have spent exactly one day over .500 in the past two months.
Perhaps the victor’s clubhouse celebration should sub out champagne for Busch Light.
Not to blame the Rangers or Astros, the latter holding the tiebreaker in the event of a deadlock. They’re simply playing out the schedule, head down, grinding through 162, only to look up and realize oh, hey, we’ve got a playoff berth in front of us.
No, there’s several culprits who helped conspire to make the 2026 American League West arguably the worst division in baseball history.
Blame the Seattle Mariners, by far the biggest disappointment this season as they’ve gone from the brink of a World Series to a 75-86 mess and a potential offseason shakeup.
Blame the Athletics, last name only, for nearly a decade of mailing it in as they’ve pulled up roots in Oakland for a shameful three-year stopover in a minor league park in Yolo County, the true embarrassment for the game.
Blame the dysfunctional Los Angeles Angels, who mercifully are getting sold yet have cycled through general managers like a teenager swipes through TikToks and are years away from establishing a championship foundation.
And blame the industry at large, which in its zeal to optimize the modern ballplayer has left a landscape of fundamentally unsound players and pitching staffs desiccated by injury and ineptitude in the never-ending quest for maximum velocity.
Yes, we said it: The modern game is in a tough spot. No, this isn’t an old man rant about how things used to be better; terrible baseball is era-agnostic.
Instead, the game’s rampant pitching shortage will be all too evident as September turns to October.
As the Rangers and Astros fight to .500, the other outstanding playoff spot pits the Arizona Diamondbacks and Philadelphia Phillies swinging pillows at one another for the No. 3 National League wild card spot.
And just how did Philly and Arizona attack their oh-so-crucial Game 161s on Saturday, Sept. 27?
With bullpen games.
Yep, the Phillies – this vaunted team that actually has a dominant starting pitching trio of Zack Wheeler, Cristopher Sánchez and Jesus Luzardo – has been opting for one to two Johnny Wholestaff games a week this month, a problem exacerbated by Luzardo’s barking shoulder. They tried turning Aaron Nola's between-starts throwing session into a spot start, and the result was predictably disastrous.
The Diamondbacks essentially have one starter they trust – lefty Eduardo Rodriguez – and a lot of sunk cost. Franchise stalwart Zac Gallen has been relegated to the bullpen. Corbin Burnes, their $210 million free agent acquisition two years ago, lasted three starts in his return from Tommy John surgery before a bum shoulder ended his season. So on a night they could have seized control of the final NL wild card slot, the Padres scored 10 runs off them.
Yet it’s not just the wannabes who have issues.
The 100-win Milwaukee Brewers will start the great Jacob Misiorowski and youngster Logan Henderson in their first two playoff games. After that? They have little idea, what with trade deadline add Dustin May aiming to work things out and maybe get through three innings while lefty Kyle Harrison’s fastball has been getting battered.
The AL-best Tampa Bay Rays can hit you with a nice 1-2 of right-handers Drew Rasmussen and Nick Martinez. After that? They cross their fingers Freddy Peralta’s revival continues, or that Griffin Jax and Ian Seymour can rise to the occasion once they hit the best-of-seven portion of October.
The NL East champion Atlanta Braves? It’s Game 1 with Chris Sale and pray for some hail.
No, only the big-market behemoths – the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees and two a lesser extent, the Boston Red Sox – and the wizard-like Cleveland Guardians will reach the postseason with their pitching in order.
The Dodgers simply buy in bulk, wisely. The Guardians will hit you with a Gavin Williams and Parker Messick 1-2 punch, two more developmental success stories in an organization that’s hacked the pitching code.
The Red Sox and Yankees are enjoying the best of both worlds, spending resources on arms while developing a few themselves.
The Yankees plucked Cam Schlittler out of the draft’s seventh round and now he’s their playoff ace. Key swingman Will Warren was an eighth-round pick. Meanwhile, the Red Sox will line up behind Payton Tolle, a second-round pick in 2024 who provides them significant punchout potential behind mercenaries Sonny Gray and Ranger Suarez.
As for the Astros and Rangers? The latter will place their season’s hopes in the left hand of MacKenzie Gore, whose stuff has always dazzled yet whose inability to maintain it deep into games or longer stretches of the season has vexed.
Houston, which would be sunk without an MVP-caliber season from slugger Yordan Alvarez, will rely on Peter Lambert, who never had a better than 5.36 ERA with the Rockies, went to Japan for a season and then came back stateside this year to post a 3.87 ERA for Houston.
The playoffs are dotted with similar stories, such as Cleveland lefty Foster Griffin, who spent three seasons with the Yomiuri Giants and came back an All-Star. Perhaps there’s a lesson in that.
Instead, the industry seems intent on building the next Miz, who may prove to truly be 1 of 1 in this era, not unlike the retiring Justin Verlander pretty much was in his. For now, we are stuck with an incomplete landscape and a lot of significantly flawed playoff teams. And in Game 162, the .500-or-worse Astros or Rangers will join it, representing something of a black mark on the game’s history.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: A non-winning team will make MLB's playoffs. It's a bad look for the game
