The Houston Astros and Texas Rangers enter the final three games of the season with identical 79-80 records. One of them is going to win the American League West and host a playoff series.
Read that again. A team that is currently a game under .500 is going to be a division champion with home-field advantage in a postseason round.
Houston Holds the Tiebreaker
The Astros lead the division despite the identical record because they won the season series against Texas. If both teams finish with the same record, Houston takes the title. That is a meaningful edge with three games left, and it means the Rangers essentially have to outgain Houston over the weekend rather than match them.
Texas plays at Minnesota, with Jacob deGrom having started Friday’s game. Houston plays at Oakland. Neither opponent has anything to play for, which makes this less a test of quality than a test of who shows up.
The Historical Footnote Is Embarrassing
At best, the AL West winner finishes 82-80. That would tie the lowest win total for a division champion in the modern era, matching the 2005 Padres and the 1973 Mets.
There is no way to spin that as a triumph. Two franchises with real payrolls and real expectations spent six months beating each other to a standstill just above mediocrity, and the survivor gets a trophy and a home playoff game.
Houston Has the Best Reason To Be Embarrassed
The Astros have Yordan Alvarez putting together a season good enough to chase a Triple Crown, and they are one game under .500. That is a damning combination. When your best hitter is having a historic year and the team cannot clear break-even, the problem is everything else.
Texas, meanwhile, has deGrom and a roster that was supposed to be built for exactly this kind of late-season fight. They arrive at the final weekend needing help.
The Format Rewards It Anyway
The winner hosts a wild-card series starting Tuesday, September 29. And here is the part that should bother purists: an 82-80 team hosting a playoff series is not automatically an easy out. Short series are chaos, home field is real, and a team with a lineup featuring Alvarez can absolutely win three games against anybody.
Baseball’s expanded playoff structure was designed to keep more teams alive in September. It worked. It also produced a division race between two teams that both have losing records with three games to go.
Just Win Something
For all the criticism, this weekend is going to be tense and it is going to be watchable. Two rivals, same record, one of them going home. Houston needs to simply match Texas. Texas needs to be better.
Whoever wins should probably skip the champagne.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.