The Houston Astros are headed to the postseason as American League West champions, but they made the wrong kind of history in the process. Houston finished the regular season 81-81 after a 9-0 win over the Oakland Athletics on Sunday, making the Astros the worst division-winning team in Major League Baseball history.
The previous low mark belonged to the 2005 San Diego Padres, who won the NL West with an 82-80 record. Houston's.500 finish now stands as the lowest winning percentage for a division winner over a full season. The Astros entered the final day tied with the Texas Rangers at 80-81, but the Rangers missed their chance to take the division while Houston handled a long-eliminated Oakland club.
What makes the Astros' division title even more remarkable is how fortunate they were to finish at.500 at all. Houston was outscored by 32 runs over the course of the season, which translates to an expected record of 78-84. Run differential is widely considered a better predictor of future performance than raw win-loss records, and by that measure Houston was not even a.500 team.
The Rangers, for their part, were worse. Texas posted a minus-46 run differential and an expected record of 76-86. Neither team looked like a legitimate contender for much of the season, yet the structure of the division left the door open for one of them to reach the playoffs.
Major League Baseball scheduled all 15 games on the final day to start within a few minutes of each other, hoping to create late-season drama. The league got it, with the AL West and the National League's third wild card spot both coming down to the final day. The Philadelphia Phillies, who had a 99.1 percent chance of reaching the postseason as recently as last week, avoided a historic collapse by beating the Tampa Bay Rays 7-3 to clinch a wild card series berth.
Houston's reward for winning the division is a best-of-three wild card series against the Chicago White Sox, which the Astros will host. Chicago is the better team on paper, but the small sample size of a playoff series makes the outcome close to a toss-up. FanGraphs gives Houston a 55 percent chance of advancing to the AL Division Series.
If the Astros win that series, they would face the Cleveland Guardians, who finished 85-77 with a plus-11 run differential. Cleveland might be a slight favorite, perhaps 57-43, but it would hardly be a foregone conclusion. That means an 81-81 team could reach the AL Championship Series.
The broader issue, according to critics of the league's financial incentives and playoff structure, is that owners are encouraged to do the bare minimum and spend as little as possible to win 85 games and hope for the best. Houston needed only 81 wins to win its division, and the Astros benefited from a weak AL West while fans watched a division race that was decided by a team that was outscored over the full season.
The Astros now move into the postseason with a chance to make the most of their unlikely path. Whether they can capitalize on the randomness of a short series remains to be seen, but their place in the record books is already secure — as the worst division winner the sport has ever seen.