How Astros, Mariners and Rangers can separate themselves from crowded AL West, plus what’s holding each back,
The division appears to be a three-team race with no clear favorite.
On paper, the AL West looked to be one of the most wide-open divisions in baseball entering the season. The division has produced the last two World Series champions — Texas Rangers in 2023 and Houston Astros in 2022 — and the Seattle Mariners have been kinda sorta maybe on the verge of breaking through for the last few years. The Los Angeles Angels and Oakland Athletics aren’t any good, but the case can be made that any of the other three teams are the AL West’s best.
Nearly eight weeks into the regular season, we are no closer to answering the “which team is the favorite in the AL West?” question than we were on Opening Day, and that’s not terribly surprising. The Astros, Mariners, and Rangers all finished within two games of each other last season and rarely does one emerge from the pack and separate itself in May. Here are the AL West standings entering play Tuesday:
Mariners: 26-22
Rangers: 24-24 (2 GB)
Astros: 21-27 (5 GB)
Angels: 19-29 (7 GB)
Athletics: 19-30 (7.5 GB)
The A’s had a nice little run a few weeks ago and pushed their record to .500 on May 4, but they are 2-13 since then and resemble the team they were expected to be in 2024 (i.e. very bad). The Angels are a mess. They were bad with Mike Trout and they are simply dreadful without him. I’m not sure any team has a bleaker long-term outlook than the Halos. The MLB roster is heavy on journeymen and the farm system is very, very thin. Things are bad in Orange County.
With the Astros closing the gap these last two weeks, the AL West is again shaping up to be a three-team race that goes right down to the final weekend of the regular season. And that’s great! As long as you don’t root for one these teams. The rest of us will get to enjoy a tight division race, assuming things continue on their current path, which of course is hardly a guarantee. Let’s check in on the three AL West contenders now that we’re nearly one-third of the way through the season, shall we?
