Two Teams Are Tied With Losing Records. One Is Going to the Playoffs.

Can a team with a losing record win its division? Right now Houston and Texas are both 79 and 80. Three games each. They do not play each other, and one of them is going to the playoffs.

It has never happened. We pulled every division winner since divisions began in 1969 — 270 of them — and not one finished below .500. The worst was the 2005 San Diego Padres at 82 and 80.

Most people assume a division winner is a good team. That is what the trophy is for. But a division is just five clubs, and if all five are bad, somebody still wins it. This week you get to watch that happen.

What has to happen for this to be normal

Both clubs need to sweep to reach 82 and 80, which only ties the worst mark ever. Houston plays the Athletics, who are 63 and 96. Texas plays Minnesota, who are 74 and 85. We give Houston a 58% chance each game and Texas 51%.

Watch where the champion actually lands.

Read the bars, not the winner. Only the top one — 82 and 80, a 30% chance — matches anything in the record book, and even that only ties it. Everything else is a record. The single most likely finish is 81 and 81, dead even, which no division winner has ever managed.

Why now and not before

Notice what changed, because two things did. Divisions got smaller — six clubs became five when Houston moved leagues — and a small division has fewer chances to contain a good team. And the playoff field got bigger, so winning a weak division is worth more than it used to be; nobody is trading away a September in a race like this.

We are not saying the AL West is rigged or broken. We are saying the math allows this, it always did, and for 57 years it simply had not come up.

What to take home

A ranking tells you who finished first. It does not tell you how good first was. Those feel like the same fact and they are not, and the gap between them is where most bad sports arguments live.

You will hear somebody this week say the AL West champion does not deserve to be there. They are wrong about the rule and right about the team. Both of those can be true, and keeping them apart is most of what reading a table well amounts to.

One honest limit: our game odds come from season records, which is a crude measure in the last week when clubs rest starters and play out the string. The history is exact; the forecast is not. We will publish what actually happened.

Check it yourself — the standings are public, and so is our odds board. The rest of the paper is at thesportspage.net.