Pre-season prognosticators were virtually unanimous: The Seattle Mariners will win the AL West. And they may well do so, but if they win the division it will not be on the strength of the season’s first 1/3. The Mariners completed their 54th game yesterday, an 8-6 loss to the Royals that left them 25-29 for the season.
How many games were the Mariners predicted to win in 2026? Here projection systems vary a touch, but let’s go with 93 as a reasonable median that conveniently is divisible by 3. That
means Seattle was projected to average winning 31 games in each of the season’s three “thirds”.
Does a 25-29 start mean analysts were way, way off and in fact the Mariners are going to win only 75 games? Probably not. Does it mean analysts were exactly right and to make up for lost time Seattle will go 68-40 the rest of the way to finish with those 93 wins? Probably not.
Here’s what I would submit is the most mathematically sound way to look at it. If the Mariners are a 93 win team that masqueraded as a 25-29 squad for 2 months, you can reasonably expect them to play at a 93 win clip going forward. But this comes with a significant caveat: Some losses are already in the bank.
How many losses? Instead of going the projected 31-23 the Mariners won a whopping 6 fewer games than that pace. And those are 6 losses they can’t get back. Give Seattle its 93 win pace going forward and you get a big turnaround of a 62-46 record in the last 2/3 of the season. Don’t be surprised if the Mariners “get up on the deck” and go 62-46 the rest of the way.
The problem, for Seattle, is that this leaves them with a season record of 87-75, not the 93-69 originally predicted. And that is a huge difference in terms of what the bar might be for teams like the A’s, Rangers, even Astros (who are only 4.5 games back of 1st place thanks to the mediocrity of the division to date).
This is important because it suggests that while the standard needed to win the AL West was poised to be something like 24 games over .500, Seattle’s stumbling first 1/3 might bring that standard all the way down to more like 12 games over .500. The A’s need to go 60-49 (a .550 clip) the rest of the season in order to finish with 87 wins.
Of course none of this is set in stone or even etch-a-sketch. It’s still entirely possible Seattle could get sizzling hot and win 95 games or that they could remain in quicksand and finish with just 78 wins. Or Texas could turn out to be the team to beat, or who knows? This is why you play the games and just try to win as often as possible.
Is my “mathnalysis” the right way to look at the division going forward? Or if not what do you think is a better projection for “The State Of The AL West” going into the season’s second 1/3? The only analysis I can bet we will all agree on is this: beating Seattle these next 3 days will only help the A’s cause.
