{"id":794220,"date":"2026-09-01T20:06:19","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T20:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/794220\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T20:06:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T20:06:19","slug":"mlb-monthly-check-in-how-the-al-west-stands-after-august","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/794220\/","title":{"rendered":"MLB Monthly Check-in: How the AL West stands after August"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every day, Pinstripe Alley offers updates on what the Yankees\u2019 top American League opponents are up to through the Rivalry Roundup<\/a>. The AL East is well-trodden ground there, but with the final month of the season just ahead, we\u2019re going to take a peek around MLB as a whole and check in with each of the other five divisions. Who\u2019s surprising? Who\u2019s underwhelming? Who\u2019s simply mediocre at the moment? Read on and find out.<\/p>\n

Note: All records and stats are for games played as of Monday morning.<\/p>\n

First Place: Houston Astros (69-68)<\/p>\n

Top Position Player: Yordan Alvarez (5.8 fWAR)
Top Pitcher: Peter Lambert (2.0 fWAR)<\/p>\n

The Astros remain the team that cannot be killed, as they lead this rock fight despite being barely above .500 themselves. During August, they made a move generally associated with being bad in making a general manager change and getting rid of Dana Brown, but they\u2019ve been just good enough to stay at the top of a very gross division.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re led by Alvarez, a legitimate MVP candidate who leads the league in a whole host of offensive categories \u2014 including all three Triple Crown categories (though he shares the home run lead with Tampa Bay\u2019s Junior Caminero). Jeremy Pe\u00f1a and Isaac Paredes have been good, while Hunter Brown has been their best on the mound, despite missing all of April and May. The rest of their roster is generally just solid enough to have them at the top of the division.<\/p>\n

Second Place: Texas Rangers (67-70, 2 GB)<\/p>\n

Top Position Player: Ezequiel Dur\u00e1n (4.4 fWAR)
Top Pitcher: Jacob deGrom (3.3 fWAR)<\/p>\n

The Rangers are a very weird team. Their collective 108 OPS+ is the third best of any team in baseball. However, their 4.04 runs per game is the third worst of any team in baseball. I can\u2019t say I understand how exactly they\u2019ve managed that, considering that they\u2019ve gotten really good seasons out of the likes of Dur\u00e1n, Joc Pederson, Josh Jung (who is currently on the IL), Wyatt Langford, and others. It\u2019s not as if they have remarkably worse numbers with runners on and\/or in scoring position either.<\/p>\n

On the pitching front, you can definitely spot an issue as Cal Quantrill is their only starter with more than 10 starts who has a better than average ERA, and he only barely clears that 10 threshold. Now, that does include deGrom, whose FIP is more than a full run better than this ERA, so it\u2019s maybe not as bad as things seem on the surface, but this can\u2019t be particularly fun team to follow as a fan right now. MacKenzie Gore hasn\u2019t been a particularly inspiring offseason trade addition, Nathan Eovaldi was placed on the IL with right elbow inflammation in mid-August and hasn\u2019t returned, and Jack Leiter is on a rehab assignment from ankle surgery. Old friend Jordan Montgomery is now back from his second Tommy John surgery and working out of the bullpen.<\/p>\n

Third Place: Seattle Mariners (64-73, 5 GB)<\/p>\n

Top Position Player: Randy Arozarena (3.6 fWAR)
Top Pitcher: Bryan Woo (3.0 fWAR)<\/p>\n

Speaking of infuriating teams to follow, both this season and every year, I present the Seattle Mariners! Remember when they were eight outs from their first ever World Series appearance less than a year ago? The follow-up has been just about as ugly as that of their victorious foe.<\/p>\n

It was always unlikely that Cal Raleigh would post another 60 home run season with a 168 OPS+, but he\u2019s at 19 homers and a 84 OPS+ for 2026. He\u2019s only even at those numbers because he\u2019s had a good last month. Besides Arozarena, pretty much every standout performer from last year\u2019s ALCS team has taken a step back. Even if the dips those key players had taken were just 10 percent better, Seattle could be clear at the top of this weak division. It\u2019s just that a big reason this division is so weak is that so many M\u2019s players have tumbled off a cliff.<\/p>\n

\"ARLINGTON,<\/a><\/p>\n

ARLINGTON, TEXAS – JULY 24: Julio Rodr\u00edguez #44 of the Seattle Mariners walks to the dugout during the fourth inning against the Texas Rangers at Globe Life Field on July 24, 2026 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Stacy Revere\/Getty Images) Getty Images<\/p>\n

Fourth Place: The Athletics (53-84, 16 GB)<\/p>\n

Top Position Player: Nick Kurtz (2.6 fWAR)
Top Pitchers: Gage Jump and J.T. Ginn (1.7 fWAR)<\/p>\n

After a 2025 season that featured some impressive years from some young players, the A\u2019s were firmly in \u201cinteresting\u201d status going into 2026. They then had a pretty good April and sat in first in the division at the end of it. However since then, the A\u2019s have gone 36-70. That winning percentage over the course of a full season would equate to 55 wins.<\/p>\n

What hasn\u2019t helped with that is that two of their young stars, Kurtz and Jacob Wilson, are both on the 60-day IL, and several other contributors to their preseason \u201cinteresting\u201d status are currently also out with injures. That includes former Yankee Luis Severino, who has been limited to just over 60 innings. That one has helped lead to a pretty poor season from A\u2019s pitching, as their 5.74 runs allowed per game is tied with the Rockies for the worst, and Colorado infamously has a built-in hinderance there \u2014 though Sacramento\u2019s minor-league park isn\u2019t much better.<\/p>\n

Last Place: Los Angeles Angels (52-85, 17 GB)<\/p>\n

Top Position Players: Mike Trout and Zach Neto (2.9 fWAR)
Top Pitcher: Reid Detmers (3.8 fWAR)<\/p>\n

Mike Trout should be allowed to football tackle Arte Moreno as a treat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Every day, Pinstripe Alley offers updates on what the Yankees\u2019 top American League opponents are up to through…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":794221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4,3537],"class_list":["post-794220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-mlb","tag-mlb-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117197588997596972","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/794221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}