American League wild-card race shaping up to be historically bonkers

The AL wild-card race is historically bonkers right now.

At the start of play Thursday, the Yankees owned the first AL wild-card spot, with a 64-55 record. The Angels, with a 62-59 mark, own the second spot.

From there, seven other teams are within 3.5 games of that second wild-card berth.

SEVEN. That’s crazy.

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The Royals are a half-game behind the Angels, followed by the Twins (1.0 back), Mariners (1.5), Rangers (2.0), Rays (2.5), Orioles (3.0) and Blue Jays (3.5).

Add those nine teams to the three division leaders, and you have 12 of the AL’s 15 teams within 3.5 games of a playoff spot entering play on Aug. 17. You can bet a certain former MLB commissioner (spoiler: Bud Selig) has to be pretty happy about that development.

“That’s the way Bud designed it,” five-time All-Star pitcher Jack Morris told Sporting News on Wednesday, before he threw out the first pitch for the Triple-A Charlotte Knights game. “That was his dream, to have parity and have everybody have a chance late in the year, so fans would still have interest and go to the ballpark and spend money. That’s a perfect storm, isn’t it?"

This 2017 perfect storm is, as we mentioned, historically bonkers.

Let’s take a look at the most crowded races in the wild-card era. Also, let’s throw in this caveat: Obviously, lots could change in the final six weeks. Teams could hit a cold spell and fall off the pace, or a couple of squads could catch fire and create a bit of a gap. There is a difference between standings in August and final standings. We understand that.

First, in the era with only one wild-card berth, from 1995 to 2011.

— In 1996, the Orioles claimed the AL wild card with 88 wins, and three teams (the Mariners, Red Sox and White Sox) finished with 85 wins.

— In 2004, the Astros won the NL wild card with 92 wins, finishing a game ahead of the Giants, with the Cubs (3.0 back), Padres (5.0) and Phillies (6.0) within shouting distance.

— In 2008, the Brewers took the NL spot. The Mets (1 back), Astros (3.5), Cardinals (4.0) and Marlins (5.5) were all relatively close.

The second wild-card was instituted for the 2012 season. Since then, crowded races have been more common, though still nothing close to this season.

— In 2014, 2015 and 2016, four teams missed a playoff spot by five games or fewer, and in 2015, a fifth team (Tampa Bay) was six games out.

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So, yeah. With nine teams fighting for two spots, this year is abnormally packed.

But we can’t end the conversation about the AL wild-card chase without bringing up one more element that’s contributed to a crowded race: These are all highly flawed teams with middling records.

There’s plenty of drama, sure, but we’re not watching nine elite teams competing against each other. This isn’t like 1999, when the Reds won 96 games but missed a wild-card berth by one game, or 2002, when the Mariners and Red Sox each won 93 games but finished six games behind the 99-win Angels. Or in the pre-wild card era, when the Giants won 103 games in 1993 but finished a game behind the Braves in the NL West.

Not even close, actually.

Four of the teams solidly in the 2017 AL wild-card race enter play Thursday under .500 on the season; the Blue Jays are 3.5 out of the second wild-card spot, but four games under, at 58-62.

Yeah. That’s ugly.

And at the moment, the Angels have that second wild-card spot with a .512 winning percentage. That translates to 83 wins for the season.

Yuck.

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Hard to believe, but that wouldn’t be completely unprecedented. Two teams won full-season division titles with only 82 wins, the 1973 Mets (by 1.5 games) and the 2005 Padres (by 5.0 games).

In 2006, the Cardinals won the NL Central with 83 victories, and then caught fire in the postseason and went on to win the World Series, becoming one of the most unlikely champs ever.

As for the wild-card berths, in the one-WC era, 88 wins was the worst total to get into the playoffs (the 1996 Orioles and 2006 Dodgers). In the two-WC era, three teams have gotten in with 87 wins, and the 2015 Astros punched their ticket with 86 wins.

Those 86 wins represented a .531 winning percentage, by the way. The teams challenging for 2017’s second AL wild-card spot will have to play much better baseball to reach that mark.