How Did the Houston Astros Make the Playoffs Without a Wining Record?

The Houston Astros recently made the playoffs with a .500 record, which is the first time a team without a winning record has made the playoffs. It’s been sparking some controversy, so in this article, I’ll be breaking everything down. Let’s get into it.

The Astros made the MLB postseason with a tied record of 81-81: 81 wins and 81 losses. To put this in perspective, excluding the COVID year, they are the first team in all of MLB history to make the playoffs without a winning record. And no, they didn’t just make the Wild Card. They won their whole division, beating out the Angels, Athletics, Mariners, and Rangers.

Want to hear something even crazier? The ‘Stros could’ve won their division with a losing record. Going into the final game of the season, the Rangers and Astros were both fighting to be the division winner. The Rangers lost their game, and because of tiebreaker rules, if the Astros had lost, they would’ve clinched a playoff spot with an 80-82 (losing) record.

Now, Houston had no chance at the Wild Card spots, with every single team being better than them by a decently wide margin. Their only hope was to beat out the Texas Rangers for the division spot, which, to their credit, they did. Annoyingly, they clinched home-field advantage in the Wild Card Series against the White Sox, even though the White Sox were better than them by two whole wins.

Luckily, the White Sox won in two games, so it wasn’t much of a big deal. But the fact still stands that the Astros won their division without a winning record, managed to snag home-field advantage against a team with a better record than themselves, just to lose in the minimum amount of games possible in the Wild Card Series.

It’s also worth mentioning that their run differential is the 20th worst in all of the MLB, and their expected record is actually three games worse than their real record. The Tigers, who did not make the playoffs, actually had a better expected record than the Houston Trashtros.

But what can MLB actually do about situations like these? One of the things they could do is give home-field advantage to whichever team has the better record. While it has never been this extreme, situations like this, where the team with the worse record receives home-field advantage, have happened before.

The second idea is to make sure every team in the postseason has a record above 81-81 (.500). While this might not happen again for a while, it could be a nice rule to have in the future, ensuring the postseason stays prestigious. MLB would essentially kick out any teams that made the postseason without a winning record.

Hopefully, this gave you a better understanding of how the Astros made the playoffs without a winning record and what MLB could actually do to prevent situations like this from happening in the future.

Thanks for reading!