Sizing up the AL wild-card race: Can the Red Sox, Mariners and Tigers challenge the Twins for the final postseason spot?

Jordan Shusterman

As the Mets and Braves duke it out for the final wild-card spot in the National League, the AL postseason race has taken a different form. There might not seem to be quite as much drama in the Junior Circuit as September draws to a close, but Minnesota’s struggles in recent weeks, including being swept by Kansas City this past weekend, have put the Twins in a somewhat delicate position. In turn, they’ve cracked open the door for three teams — the Tigers, Red Sox and Mariners — to dream of a surprise, late entry into the postseason field.

According to FanGraphs, the teams with the five best records in the American League — the Yankees, Guardians, Orioles, Astros and Royals — all have a better than 95% chance of playing in October. The Twins, meanwhile, sit at a comfortable but not certain 85%. Barring a stunning, late collapse from the aforementioned five, it will be on the Twins to fend off the competition over the final few weeks and secure the last AL postseason spot.

With 17 games remaining for each team, here’s a look at what’s ahead for these four squads — and what’s at stake for each club in a broader sense.

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  • Playoff odds: 85.3%

  • Record in past 30 games: 12-18

  • Record in past 10 games: 4-6

  • Remaining schedule:

    • 1 vs. Angels

    • 3 vs. Reds

    • 4 at Guardians

    • 3 at Red Sox

    • 3 vs. Marlins

    • 3 vs. Orioles

You knew things were getting dire when the Twins felt the need to reintroduce the rally sausage into their dugout home run celebrations after a months-long absence. The unusual prop returned Tuesday during a much-needed victory over the Angels, which stopped a four-game skid that had Twins fans starting to sweat.

This is still a solid, well-rounded roster, just not one with the kind of star-level talent that can carry a team for extended periods, a la Bobby Witt Jr. in Kansas City or Jose Ramirez in Cleveland — or at least not that is currently healthy. Ace Pablo Lopez and reliever Griffin Jax have been marvelous but also just about the only two pitchers the Twins can count on lately, while injuries to Carlos Correa and Byron Buxton and an unfamiliar cold stretch from Royce Lewis have left this lineup in an uninspiring state.

A road trip to Cleveland and Boston looms large next week, as all seven of those games will have the opportunity to shake up the standings in some form. And should the Twins heat back up over the next couple of weeks and the Orioles fall substantially behind the Yankees, Minnesota’s season finale against Baltimore could also impact the AL wild-card order in the final hours of the regular season.

As we learned last year with Arizona and Texas, once you get in, anything can happen. The Twins are still in great position to give themselves that chance, and if they can get a bit healthier on offense, perhaps there’s another chapter for this team that reenergizes the fan base the way it did last October.

Last year, the Twins ran away with a division title as the only team in the AL Central with a winning record. This year, they find themselves scrapping for a postseason spot as one of an MLB-leading four AL Central teams with winning records. While it has certainly helped to have maybe the worst team of all time at the bottom of your division — the White Sox are 8-40 against the Central this year — it’s clear that the three other clubs have all proven themselves as worthwhile contenders.

Relative to those other three clubs, it’s hard to argue that the Twins are on a notably upward trajectory over the past year. Few teams across the league were less active both in the previous offseason and at the trade deadline, which looks especially bad in relation to a Royals team that made a ton of additions over the past calendar year and is boldly reaping the rewards. But even ignoring the successes of their direct competition, Minnesota’s recurring injury struggles combined with an unwillingness to make notable changes to a flawed roster (whether due to payroll or otherwise) has the Twins in something of a precarious position — not just for the remainder of this season but moving forward as well.

  • Playoff odds: 6.1%

  • Record in past 30 games: 12-18

  • Record in past 10 games: 3-7

  • Remaining schedule:

    • 1 vs. Orioles

    • 4 at Yankees

    • 3 at Rays

    • 3 vs. Twins

    • 3 at Blue Jays

    • 3 vs. Rays

Manager Alex Cora summed it up well earlier this week when he said, “We’re right there, still right there. I don’t know how.” This was a simultaneous acknowledgement of his club’s intention to continue to push for the playoffs and the fact that the Red Sox haven’t exactly been playing at a level commensurate with a legitimate contender.

A pitching staff that excelled earlier in the year has downright capitulated in the second half, with an ugly August negating all the progress made midsummer, when the offense was producing like one of the game’s best and the pitching was doing just enough to keep the Sox in playoff position. They appeared to be charting a parallel path to the one being traversed by the Mets in the National League, but then Boston went and got swept in Queens last week, sending the two teams in different directions with just a few weeks to go.

The Red Sox face a challenging final stretch of games against divisional rivals who would be ecstatic to eliminate them from postseason contention and a Minnesota team competing for the same wild-card spot. If the Red Sox’s playoff chances can survive their upcoming road trip to the Bronx and Tampa, those three games against the Twins at Fenway could be awfully juicy. But given the way the Red Sox have been playing lately, it’s pretty difficult to envision that being the case. It’s also worth noting that while the Red Sox are the only team of this quartet that will play a majority of its remaining games on the road, Boston has played much better away from Fenway this year (39-32 on the road, 34-40 at home), so maybe that’s not a bad thing.

It’s a good thing the Red Sox extended manager Alex Cora midseason. That was a question hanging over the organization entering the year and one that seemed primed to resurface should Boston have another underwhelming season, as Cora could have sought a new job elsewhere as one of the more popular names on the managerial market.

But while their skipper is set going forward, concerns about this front office and ownership group’s ability to build a roster capable of competing in the ever-evolving gauntlet that is the AL East remain at the forefront for a fan base that isn’t used to extended stretches of mediocrity. The Red Sox are heading toward a third consecutive year without playoff baseball, something that hasn’t happened for this franchise since 2010-2012.

The good news is that Boston boasts arguably the best farm system in baseball, with an outstanding collection of position-player prospects (Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, Kyle Teel, Kristian Campbell) who are already in the upper minors and could either contribute in 2025 or serve as valuable trade chips this winter. An ultra-talented offensive core is a great foundation to build around if Boston wants to get back to competing for division titles, but it’ll be on this front office to put together a pitching staff that can hold up over the course of 162 games (and beyond) and support what could be one of the best lineups in baseball next season.

  • Playoff odds: 9.7%

  • Record in past 30 games: 19-11

  • Record in past 10 games: 6-4

  • Remaining schedule:

    • 2 vs. Rockies

    • 3 vs. Orioles

    • 3 at Royals

    • 3 at Orioles

    • 3 vs. Rays

    • 3 vs. White Sox

The Tigers have the best record in the AL since the beginning of July, an astonishing fact that reflects how consistent this team has been for two months but also how poor it was earlier in the summer … which is why the Tigers still face such an uphill battle to reach the postseason.

Keider Montero’s 96-pitch shutout of Colorado on Tuesday likely said more about the Rockies than the 24-year-old rookie right-hander, but it was an awfully encouraging performance for a rotation that still appears fairly unsettled beyond Cy Young favorite Tarik Skubal. It was also exactly the kind of dominant win against a weaker opponent that the Tigers will need to replicate if they want to have any chance of chasing down the Twins. Detroit needs to take care of business against teams such as the Rockies and White Sox because it’s going to be far more difficult to gain ground in their six contests against an Orioles team fighting for the AL East title and a Royals team that seems to have found its groove.

We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the Tigers are tied with the Angels for the longest active postseason drought in MLB, having last played playoff baseball in 2014. In those simple terms, this is a fan base that has been starved for relevant games this late in the season for quite some time and thus, at least on the surface, would be as desperate as any to see their club find a way to qualify for October. However, compared to the other three teams in this exercise — whose fan bases had far higher standards coming into the season and who have trended in the wrong direction in recent months — Detroit undeniably is under far less pressure over the final three weeks.

Although they haven’t launched out of their rebuild as dramatically as the Royals, the Tigers’ excellent second half and the ongoing integration of several young hitters into the every-day lineup has certainly instilled a sense of optimism heading into 2025, regardless of whether this team sneaks into the postseason this year. Considering how stuck in the mud the Tigers seemed to be back in June, that’s a significant development for this franchise. And with a strong farm system headlined by arguably baseball’s top pitching prospect in Jackson Jobe, there is more help on the way.

That said, with the divisional competition looking far more formidable than it has in years, Detroit’s front office will need to deftly navigate the daunting offseason ahead if it wants to keep pace in the AL Central and ensure that next year is another step in the right direction. While an improvement on last year’s 78-win campaign can certainly be considered an organizational victory for 2024, ending the postseason drought must be the focus in 2025.

  • Playoff odds: 5.3%

  • Record in past 30 games: 14-16

  • Record in past 10 games: 4-6

  • Remaining schedule:

    • 1 vs. Padres

    • 4 vs. Rangers

    • 3 vs. Yankees

    • 3 at Rangers

    • 3 at Astros

    • 3 vs. A’s

What Seattle has that the other teams in this discussion do not is a slim chance of chasing down a division title, as the Mariners sit just four games behind the Astros atop the AL West. Granted, being four games back is a lot worse than being 10 games, as the Mariners were back in June, when FanGraphs tabbed them as 86% likely to win their first division title since 2001. A whole lot has gone wrong since then, as a lackluster offense has failed to support an elite rotation en route to an epic plummet down the standings that cost Scott Servais his job, and now the M’s find themselves on the fringes of postseason relevance.

Still, there is a narrow path to the playoffs for Seattle that doesn’t require the likes of Minnesota, Boston and Detroit to falter ahead of them. Then again, that route depends on an even better team in Houston stumbling down the stretch. That isn’t looking especially likely, with seven more games against the lowly Angels lined up for the Astros over the next couple of weeks, but if the Mariners can keep it close going into their three-game set at Minute Maid Park in the final week, perhaps we could have one more intriguing division race emerge.

For the staggering number of times this team has been eliminated on the final weekend over the past decade, yet another narrow playoff miss would be a particularly difficult pill for this fan base to swallow. Far more troubling in the bigger picture is an organization that has continued to miss the mark on and off the field since ending its historic postseason drought in 2022 and now might find itself fighting to stay above .500 after averaging 89 wins the past three seasons.

No longer can this leadership group — one that is reportedly sticking around no matter how the final few weeks unfold — go into the winter claiming with a straight face that it’s just a few tweaks away from competing with Houston, which is what the messaging has predominantly been since the Mariners fell to the rival ‘Stros in the 2022 ALDS. There are significant questions to be asked about this front office’s ability to assemble a competent offense, and with inconsistent (and somewhat unpredictable) levels of payroll investment from ownership in recent winters, it’s unclear what avenues the club will take to address the lineup in a meaningful way.

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