Rangers or Astros for the AL West - tied at 78-79 with five left, and neither can clinch on its own

On this site's September 20 update, Texas could settle the American League West, and a postseason place with it, by winning every game it had left. That is no longer true. Texas and Houston are now level at 78-79 with five games each to play, and neither has a clinch number. Five wins from five would not guarantee Texas anything, and five from five would not guarantee Houston anything either. Both carry the same tragic number, 5.

Every figure below comes from the September 23 standings update and the same engine that fills the tables on this site. Clinch numbers assume every rival wins out and tragic numbers assume every rival loses out, so none of it is a projection or a probability.

The blank clinch column is the engine doing exactly what it is built to do. To find a club's clinch number, this board writes out a final table in which that club wins some of its remaining games and every other club wins all of theirs, and it places the club being judged at the bottom of any tie. Run it for Texas. Five wins take the Rangers to 83-79. Houston, winning out, also finishes 83-79. The records are level, the judged club goes last, and on that table Houston takes the West. The wild card is no fallback: on the same table Cleveland finishes 87-75 and Chicago 86-76, and all three wild cards go to clubs with more than 83 wins. No number of Texas wins produces a table with Texas in it, so the column stays empty. Work out Houston's number and the picture flips. Texas takes the West on Houston's table, and Houston's column stays empty for the same reason. Houston is the club marked inside the field on the current table, but with identical records that mark is only an order between level clubs, and neither club's numbers give it any weight.

The tragic numbers come from the opposite table, where the judged club wins what it can and everyone else loses out. On that table Houston finishes 78-84, and Texas drops out only by losing all five and finishing 78-84 as well: level with Houston for the West, and short of Chicago's floor of 81-81 for a wild card. The tie counts against Texas. That is why the number is 5, every game Texas has left, and why Houston's is 5 for the mirror reason. The next result moves these numbers in a way that is easy to misread. A Texas win takes Texas's tragic number off the board. At 79-79 with four left, even four more losses leave Texas at 79-83, above Houston's floor of 78-84, so no run of Texas's own results can knock it out and the column goes blank. A Houston win works the other way: it lifts the line Texas has to clear to 79 wins and cuts Texas's number to 4. The tie rule has one more consequence worth knowing now. If the two finish level and neither can reach a wild card, this board will show both clubs eliminated, since each is judged at the bottom of its own tie. Unless Seattle, which can still reach 78-84, finishes level with them as well, one of them will in fact be the West champion. MLB settles that kind of tie on paper under its own tiebreakers, and this board does not model them.

The wild card is the second route, and it runs through the Central. Cleveland (82-75) needs two more wins to clinch a place, Chicago (81-76) three. Both targets land on 84 wins, one clear of 83, the most either Texas or Houston can reach. So the two Central numbers are also the door for whichever West club does not win the division, and it stays open until both reach zero. It is a real door. If Texas wins out, Houston goes 4-1 and Cleveland and Chicago both lose out, Texas takes the West at 83-79, Cleveland takes the Central at 82-80, and Houston's 82 wins beat Chicago's 81 for the last wild card. Both Central clubs are inside the field today, but Cleveland can still finish as low as seventh in the league and Chicago as low as ninth. Cleveland's division number is 5, all of its remaining games, and Chicago has none. Above them no postseason place is left to settle. Tampa Bay has taken the East, the Yankees are in, and Boston has clinched: at 84-73, its floor of 84 wins is more than either West club can reach. Seeding is still open, and Boston can finish anywhere from third to fifth in the league.

Baltimore and Toronto are out, and the way they went out shows the other half of the tie rule. Both are 77-81 with four to play, so the best either can finish is 81-81. That is exactly where Chicago lands if the White Sox lose all five, and on that table Chicago holds the last wild card. On this board a club that can only draw level with the line is counted out, so both are marked eliminated. MLB would settle such a tie on paper, which means the league's own elimination can come later than ours. Seattle is out on this board for the same reason: its best finish, 78-84, only draws level with the floor Texas and Houston share. Detroit (74-85, three left) cannot get past 77 wins, so no tie is involved in its case.

The National League has a tie of its own, three clubs wide. The Cubs, San Diego and Philadelphia are all 87-70, and each needs two more wins, which takes each of them to 89, one clear of the 88 Arizona can still reach. Arizona (83-74) has a tragic number of 1, and a win does not ease it. The ceiling of 88 already assumes Arizona wins out, so winning leaves it where it is. What sets the number is the floor above: if the three all lose out, each finishes 87-75. One more Arizona loss leaves the Diamondbacks able to reach only 87-75, level with all three floors, and a level finish counts against the judged club, so that loss rules Arizona out on this board. The same rule applied from the other side means that loss alone clinches nobody. Each of the three would still have to get clear of 87, so their numbers fall to 1, not 0. Until one of them does, the board can show Arizona out and three clubs not yet in, with nobody left who could take their places. That corrects our September 20 Arizona piece, which said all three numbers would reach zero on the same day as Arizona's. Atlanta needs one win to take the East, where Philadelphia is five back.

What to watch is short. In the West, a clinch number comes back for whichever club first gets a game clear of the other while both have the same number of games left, and it will equal every game that club has left, which is exactly where Texas stood on September 20. Cleveland's 2 and Chicago's 3 decide how long the West runner-up keeps a wild-card route: once both reach zero, that route is closed. In the National League, Arizona's 1 is the only number that can change who is in, and Atlanta's 1 settles the East. The remaining fixtures, including any meetings between these clubs, are on the schedule page, and results land on the live table.

How to read these numbers. A clinch or magic number is the minimum further wins that guarantee a postseason place even if every rival wins every remaining game. A tragic number is the further losses after which a place is impossible even if the club wins every remaining game. Zero means it is done, and a blank means no run of that club's own results can settle it. In MLB this board puts the judged club at the bottom of every tie on its own final table, on both sides of the count, so a clinch here can trail the official announcement and an elimination can be called on a tie the league would break on paper. Official tiebreakers and head-to-head fixtures are not part of the calculation. Club figures are on the magic number page, the bracket and seeding rules on the postseason page, what one result would change on the what-if page, the arithmetic on the methodology page, and each club's own answer on its team page (/mlb/team/tex, /mlb/team/hou).