Where Seattle Mariners’ AL West race with Astros and Rangers stands

Despite a down year for the division, the race for the American League West title is shaping up to be one of the most intriguing over the final month of the season.

Amsinger: Why the Seattle Mariners will win the AL West title

The Houston Astros entered Thursday leading the division with a one-half game advantage over the second-place Texas Rangers and 2 1/2-game lead over the third-place Seattle Mariners with each team having less than 30 games remaining on its schedule. No other division has more than one team within 5 1/2 games of first place.

Seattle and Texas are both off Thursday while Houston faces the New York Yankees. So, the Mariners will be either two or three games back of the division lead when they begin their three-game road series against the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday.

MLB Standings

Among the AL West contenders, the M’s have the best record of late with a 6-4 mark over their past 10 games – a stretch that included three games apiece against the NL contenders in the Milwaukee Brewers, Chicago Cubs and Philadelphia Phillies. They’ve made up three games on Houston and one on Texas during that stretch.

But at the moment, Seattle has the worst odds to win the division among the trio battling for AL West supremacy, per FanGraphs. The site gives the Mariners a 26.4% chance to win the division. Meanwhile, Houston has a 37.9% chance and Texas a 35.8% chance.

Two advantages M’s have

The Astros and Rangers have better odds to win the division, but the Mariners appear to have the easier path despite having ground to make up and the worst odds.

Seattle has the easiest remaining strength of schedule in baseball by a wide margin at .437, per Tankaton. The next-easiest schedule is Toronto’s at .469.

Of the Mariners’ 28 remaining games, just three (at Boston from Aug. 31-Sept. 2) are against teams that entered Thursday with a record of .500 or better. And 17 of those 28 games are against the Athletics, Los Angeles Angels and Colorado Rockies – the teams with the three worst records in MLB.

In comparison, Houston has the 13th-toughest remaining SOS at .506, which includes three games against Tampa Bay, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Arizona, plus four against the White Sox. And Texas has the 10th-toughest remaining SOS at .511, which includes three against Milwaukee, Boston and Arizona, and four against Tampa Bay. All of those opponents for both except Arizona, which is one game back of the NL’s final wild-card berth, currently hold playoff spots.

The other advantage Seattle has is the inside track on the tiebreaker if all three finish with the same record atop the division. The tiebreaker would go to the team with the best record against the other two.

At 12-9 against the Astros and Rangers this season, the Mariners can clinch that tiebreaker by winning two of their final three games against the Rangers or by winning any combination of three games in their five combined games remaining against the Astros and Rangers.

A chance for history

FanGraphs currently projects the Astros for the most wins out of the group at 80.8. So, it may take just a .500 record to claim the AL West crown.

If a team is able to win the division with a below .500 record, it would be the first time that has happened in MLB history. The closest a team has ever come to achieving that feat is when the San Diego Padres won the NL West with an 82-80 record in 2005. However, this year isn’t the first time the AL West has flirted with having a below .500 division winner. In 1994, the Rangers led the division at 52-62 before the season was canceled due to a player’s strike.

If the Mariners are the first team to do it, the city of Seattle will have seen two of its pro teams become the first in its sport to win a division with a losing record in a full season. The Seattle Seahawks became the first NFL team to do so when they won the NFC West at 7-9.

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