A’s are in 1st place with losing record. Could they make playoffs — and MLB history?
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- The A’s sit at 23-24 and still hold first place in the AL West.
- If the A’s win the division, they’d be the first sub-.500 playoff team in a full season.
- Historical shortened seasons produced three previous sub-.500 playoff qualifiers.
After a brutal, last-minute loss to the Los Angeles Angels on Monday, the Athletics fell below .500 for the first time since they were 6-7 on April 7.
But the 23-24 record for the West Sacramento-based team was still enough to hold onto first place in the struggling American League West, one game ahead of the Seattle Mariners (23-26) and Texas Rangers (22-25).
Should this improbable — though possible — trend continue through the end of the season, the A’s would be the first sub-.500 team to qualify for the postseason after a full 162-game season.
Though there are still well over 100 games left to play, the AL West has already proven to be volatile, with four of the teams sitting at around .500 in intra-division play, outside the Houston Astros, who are 6-12 against fellow AL West opponents.
If the divisional rivals continue to split results and struggle against outside foes, whoever wins the AL West could make history.
With the A’s on pace to become the first sub-.500 playoff team in a full season, here is a look at the weird circumstances that have caused the three previous occurrences of a losing team making the MLB playoffs.
2020 Brewers and Astros
Both the Milwaukee Brewers and Houston Astros snuck into the expanded, 16-team 2020 playoffs, each with a record of 29-31. The regular season was shortened to 60 games due to the COVID-19 pandemic, causing the regular season results to vary greatly, partially leading to the expanded postseason schedule.
The Brewers made it in as the second wild card team, the No. 8 seed in the National League, before losing to the eventual World Series champion Los Angeles Dodgers in two games.
On the other hand, the Astros made it into the playoffs as the sixth-seeded, second-place team in the AL West behind the then-Oakland Athletics and marched all the way to the American League Championship Series before losing to the Tampa Bay Rays in seven games.
The Astros were perhaps the greatest example of the variance a 60-game regular season exposed, as they swept the division-winning Minnesota Twins in the wild card round before beating the A’s in four games by a combined 11-run differential.
The 2020 season also was the most recent in which the A’s made the playoffs, the most recent in which they won the division and the most recent in which they won a postseason series (over the Chicago White Sox, in three games).
1981 Royals
In a strike-shortened 1981 season that saw closer Rollie Fingers win AL MVP for the Brewers, the Kansas City Royals may have been one of the most unique storylines of a statistically unusual season.
Before the 50-day player’s strike, the Royals were 20-30. In the second half of the season, they went 30-23, edging out the A’s, who handily compiled the best overall record in the AL West at 64-45.
Though the Royals actually finished fourth in the AL West at 50-53, the second-half crown gave them the right to play the A’s for the divisional championship, though the A’s went on to sweep the Royals in three games. (There were only two divisions in each league — east and west — whose division winners would typically face off in each league’s championship series, which had been the first round of the playoffs. The Divisional Round didn’t return permanently until 1995.)
The New York Yankees then swept the A’s in the 1981 American League Championship series.
2005 Padres
The 2005 San Diego Padres did not finish the regular season with a losing record, winning the National League West by five games with an 82-80 record. However, they went on to be swept in three games by the 100-win St. Louis Cardinals in the first round of the postseason, putting their overall season record at 82-83 when including playoff games.
Notably, this Padres team could have dropped any four games to teams other than the Arizona Diamondbacks and still won the division, finishing with a theoretical 78-84 record, proving the sub-.500 division winner is possible.
If the A’s hope to avoid entering the record books for this unfortunate stat, the easiest fix is to get back to .500, which they have a chance to do starting at 6:38 p.m. Tuesday when they face the Angels for the second of a four-game series in Anaheim.
