Breaking down the wide-open AL: 'One good week and you're in it'

Though it was not reflected in the All-Star Game result, the American League is a mess.

If you’re into powerhouses positioning themselves for the postseason -- elite teams chasing triple-digit win totals and large run differentials -- the 2026 AL might not be the league for you.

(Don’t worry, we have this whole other league called the NL, where that kind of stuff is taking place. So enjoy that.)

No, the AL is a place for plot twists and for narratives that have the lifespan of a mayfly.

“Numbers don’t lie sometimes,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said.

The numbers say the AL is nothing special. But then again, maybe that’s what makes it special.

“So many of the teams are the same,” an AL scout said. “One good week and you’re in it.”

Schneider’s Blue Jays are emblematic both of this mess and the opportunity it creates.

The Jays won the AL last year after a convincing midseason surge rooted in their strong clubhouse culture. They went out and spent gobs of money last winter to seemingly cement their status as favorites to repeat in the deep AL East.

Then the season started and, well … it kind of feels like it hasn’t really started in Toronto, doesn’t it? The 2026 Jays have never led the division outright, have never been more than three games over .500 or more than seven games below it and have never won more than four games in a row. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. has fewer home runs than Andrés Giménez.

In other words, the Jays are “meh.” It’s landed them in last place in the East … but only 2 1/2 games back of an AL Wild Card spot. If they’ve somehow saved their first earnest winning streak for the second half of the season, it could launch them into clearer contention.

“We’re still doing OK and treading water,” Schneider said.

And that’s the theme of the AL, where 12 teams have, according to FanGraphs’ calculations, at least a 20% chance of making the playoffs -- compared with only nine teams in the NL.

But there’s a flip side to that closeness.

The AL hit the All-Star break with a collective winning percentage of .486, which would be the worst for either the AL or NL since Interleague Play was instituted in 1997. It’s 28 percentage points below the winning percentage of the NL, creating the third-largest disparity in either direction at this point in the season since ‘97. The 28-point difference is also at least 10 points more than any other season since the postseason was expanded in 2022.

Only one AL team hit the break with a run differential higher than plus-35, and that was the Yankees at plus-91. And because nothing can be normal in the AL this year, those same Yankees are in second place in their division.

“No one's gotten really, really hot,” Twins manager Derek Shelton said. “I mean, Tampa got hot, and then they got cold. Boston's the hottest team in baseball right now, but they're coming from a disadvantage. Detroit has played better than anybody else lately [but started poorly]. It's very interesting to me.”

Even the AL award races are odd this year. Three-time MVP Aaron Judge is out of the race for that honor for the first time since 2020 because of a rib cage injury that could have him out until September. Two-time reigning AL Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal’s three-peat bid was interrupted by injury long enough to pull him out of the mix.

Only three of the top 10 AL MVP finishers last year were All-Stars this year. And none of the top six AL Cy Young vote recipients from 2025 were All-Stars in 2026.

Injuries to elite players contribute to the AL’s parity, but it’s not as if that’s a uniquely AL phenomenon. According to the injury data available at Spotrac, the list of the top 10 teams in terms of salary value lost to injury is evenly split between AL and NL teams.

But as historically low as the AL winning percentage might be, it’s created a situation in which more markets have reason to be invested in the day-to-day outcomes.

“It’s great for the fans,” Guardians catcher Austin Hedges said. “Any team can beat any team on any given night, and it’s just who is going to play a better game of baseball.”

The Rays have played better than anyone, taking a 56-38 record and three-game East advantage into the break. That’s the same Rays team that was given only a 6.8% chance of winning the division by FanGraphs at the start of the season.

But their staying power will be put to the test. The Rays have outperformed their Pythagorean win expectancy (based on run differential) by six games. Their .700 home winning percentage (which currently ranks among the top 100 home marks of all-time) might prove unsustainable, and their performance in one-run games has begun to level off (2-8 in their last 10 such games after starting out 9-1).

“I think everyone in our division is not to be taken lightly,” Rays starter Nick Martinez said.

On the flip side, the four teams in MLB that have had the worst “luck,” in terms of their run differentials not being reflected properly by their current records, are all in the AL:

It’s probably asking a lot of the Royals and Angels, both of whom have sub-.400 winning percentages and are 10 games out of a Wild Card spot, to climb into the fray. But no one else in the AL is more than 6 1/2 games out. Meanwhile, no one has a division lead of more than three games. The Tigers and Red Sox have already made massive surges after uninspiring starts.

What this points to is a vague Trade Deadline, which is coming up quick on Aug. 3.

“I think there’s going to be a lot of activity just before the Deadline,” the scout said. “But it won’t be buyers and sellers; it’ll be teams doing both.”

Added Shelton: “Are we going to see the San Diego of ’24 where they won, you know, 14 of 15 and all of a sudden separated themselves? I don't know. But I think it's going to be that stretch of who plays well in those last seven to 10 days before the Deadline that really matters.”

Maybe the best days of the AL in 2026 are still ahead of us. And maybe the team that survives this mess will be that much better for it when the World Series comes.

“The season is called a season for a reason,” Schneider said. “You see where it shakes out after 162.”

So there’s still a lot of time to clean up this mess.