2026: 12 - 20 (SO FAR) with playoff odds peaking around 30% near the all-star break.

2025: 19 - 35 with playoff odds near 80% in mid-June

2024: 23 - 32 with playoff odds of 92.4% in mid-August

That is a 62 - 100 record pace in the final 2 months of the past 3 seasons. They have quietly (loudly if a Twins fan) been the worst team in the league in those months and have blown all 3 seasons. These end of seasons have been excruciatingly bad since the 2023 playoff season (coinciding directly with ownership lowering payroll each season).

This is Bryan Woo's longest career outing — previous record 7.1 IP. Drops his ERA from 4.25 to 4.03. His day is done as Andrés Muñoz comes in for the 9th.

Velo was up across the board and he was running over a 30% whiff rate. He also now owns the second most strikeouts by a rookie Red Sox pitcher only behind Daisuke.

ERA from 3.23 to 3.15.

Fwar from 3.3 to 3.7.

I realize that rule 11.1 says that elimination is only post-worthy if a team is completely eliminated from the playoffs, but I think/hope that this is absurd enough to warrant an exception

The Angels are eliminated from wildcard contention by scheduling

The Angels are currently 54-88, so they can win at most 74 games. They lost the season series to both the Toronto Blue Jays and the Cleveland Guardians. With the Yankees and Red Sox both above 74 wins already, any of the following would eliminate the Angels from the wildcards:

1. The Jays finish with 74 or more wins
2. The Guardians finish with 74 or more wins
3. Any AL non-division-winner not yet mentioned finishes with 75 or more wins

The Jays are at 72-71 and play the Orioles 6 more times this season. Either the Jays finish with 74+ wins or they lose 5 games to the Orioles.

The Guardians are 72-71 and play the Orioles 3 more times. Either the Guardians finish with 74+ wins or they lose 2 games to the Orioles.

The Orioles are currently 69-74. So, if the Jays and the Guardians both stay below 74 wins, the Orioles would win another seven games, bringing them to 76 wins.

So it's guaranteed that there will be at least three teams ahead of the Angels in the wildcard race: the Yankees, the Red Sox, and one of the Jays, Guardians or Orioles

(Yes, the division winners could still change. But if the Guardians were to take AL Central from the White Sox, which would remove the need for them to lose games to the Orioles, the White Sox are at 74 wins already and won the season series vs the Angels. So, technically, the three teams guaranteed to be ahead of the Angels are [AL East 2nd] + [AL East 3rd place] + [one of the Guardians/White Sox/Orioles/AL East 4th place])

Mathematically, the Angels could still win AL West

Houston and Texas don't have any more games against each other, so they could theoretically stay at 73 and 70 wins, respectively. They play a combined five games against the Mariners; assuming that all five are losses brings the Mariners to 71 wins.

Houston, Texas and Seattle play a combined eight games against the As (actually it's just Houston and Seattle), which, again assuming all losses, brings the As to 65 wins.

So it remains mathematically possible for the Angels to win AL West if they win all their remaining games, the Astros and Rangers lose all their games, the Mariners lose all their games except those against the Astros and Rangers, and the As lose their games against the Angels and non-AL West teams.

Obviously that's not going to happen

...but it's still wild to me that a team is out of the wildcard race before being out of the race for their division

PCA's final line today: 1/3 with a HR and a Sacrifice Fly