Friday's losses by Houston and Texas left both AL West leaders at 79-81 with two games remaining, guaranteeing MLB's first division winner with a .500-or-worse record. Houston holds the tiebreaker; Texas must win one more game than the Astros.
Texas fell 10-2 to Minnesota, while Houston lost 6-5 to the Athletics. Before 2026, the closest a division champion had come to .500 was the 2005 San Diego Padres, who went 82-80 and were swept by St. Louis in the NLDS.
The division winner will host a wild-card series against the AL's third wild-card team. The Yankees and Red Sox, the other two wild-card teams, will face each other despite both having better records than the teams in the division winner's series.
