Astros Tie Texas for First With a Losing Record

Yordan Alvarez hit his 41st homer and drove in three runs as Houston blanked Seattle 7-0 on Tuesday. The Astros pulled even with Texas at 78-79 in the AL West, with five games left and the tiebreaker in hand.

A losing-record club now shares first place. Last season’s AL West champions are five games back after a shutout at home, and Alvarez is still hunting a Triple Crown on that 78-79 roster.

The AL West Is Tied at 78-79

Houston snapped a three-game skid at T-Mobile Park and first-place tie atop the AL West with the Rangers, who lost 6-3 to the New York Mets. Both clubs are 78-79, a.497 mark after 157 games. Neither has climbed above.500. If they finish with the same record, Houston gets the division, because it won the season series.

Seattle is 73-84, five games back with five to play. The Athletics (62-95) and Angels (60-97) are already out. The West is a two-team sprint between clubs that have lost more games than they have won.

AL WEST WITH FIVE GAMES LEFT

All five of Houston’s remaining games are on the road. Texas hosts the Mets twice more, then closes at Minnesota. The clubs do not play each other again, so the standings will move only through other cities.

Alvarez Reached 41 Homers and 102 RBIs

Houston opened with four straight singles off Logan Gilbert, and Alvarez’s RBI single in the first made it 1-0. That drove in his 100th run of the season, the second 100-RBI year of his career. Jose Altuve and Yainer Diaz singled in the third, and Christian Walker crushed a three-run homer to left for a 4-0 lead. It was Walker’s 26th homer this season and the 200th of his career.

Isaac Paredes added a solo shot in the sixth, his 23rd. Cam Smith snapped an 0-for-26 skid with a double. Alvarez finished it in the eighth with a two-run drive to right, tying Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero for the American League lead at 41 homers. He went 2-for-4 with a walk and three RBIs.

He also spoke up in a clubhouse meeting after Atlanta swept Houston over the weekend. On Tuesday he was the one doing the showing.

Like I said before, there’s no other option. It’s just going out and winning. Monday was a day that we were able to reset and just focus on the six games we have left and try to win those six games.

Yordan Alvarez, Astros designated hitter, after Tuesday’s win in Seattle

He leads the league at .314. He has 102 RBIs, six behind Baltimore’s Pete Alonso. He has 172 hits in 547 at-bats across 153 games, with 106 walks, an.431 on-base percentage, a.601 slugging percentage, and a 1.032 OPS. FanGraphs credits him with 6.5 WAR and a 180 wRC+. Over his last seven games he is hitting.417.

Walker put the rest of the league on notice about the middle of Houston’s order.

That guy’s going to hit. At this point, I keep wondering why guys are pitching to him. He seems to come through at each moment. He’s dangerous at the plate right now.

Christian Walker, Astros first baseman

TRIPLE CROWN LINE AGAINST THE LAST WINNER

Cabrera’s last batting Triple Crown in 2012 is the only one since Carl Yastrzemski in 1967, and those Tigers went to the World Series. Alvarez still has to pass Alonso in RBIs and hold off Caminero in homers. Alvarez’s.314 average, 41 homers, and 102 RBIs put him on the doorstep, but the RBI gap is the piece that has not closed. Houston’s last four games are at the Athletics, which is the softer remaining pitching he will see.

Last Season’s ALCS Club Stands Five Games Out

Seattle won the West in 2025 at 90-72, its first division title since 2001, then beat Detroit in the ALDS and took Toronto to Game 7 of the ALCS. One more win would have put the Mariners in the World Series for the first time. Cal Raleigh hit 60 homers in that run. The 2026 club has not come close to that team.

SEATTLE’S YEAR AFTER A GAME 7

1. September 25, 2025: Clinches the AL West for the first time since 2001, finishing 90-72.
2. October 2025: Loses ALCS Game 7 to the Toronto Blue Jays after holding series leads.
3. September 15, 2026: Takes its 82nd loss and locks a losing full season, the first since 2019.
4. September 22, 2026: Falls 7-0 at home and sits 73-84, five games behind two 78-79 clubs.

Gilbert lasted only four innings, charged with four runs on 10 hits, the most hits he has allowed in a game this season. He is 12-11. Seattle is hitting.231 as a team, 29th in the majors, and has scored 634 runs, 28th. The Mariners still have a mathematical path if they run the table and both Houston and Texas collapse, but a 7-0 home loss with five games left is the sound of a door closing.

Rookie right-hander Ethan Pecko (1-0, 3.77 ERA) makes his fifth major league start on Wednesday against George Kirby (9-11, 4.24) at 10:10 p.m. Eastern. A Seattle win would keep the faint division math alive one more night. It would not change how far the 2025 team has fallen.

Baseball Has Never Crowned a Sub-.500 Division Winner

No club has ever won a full-season division title with a losing record. The closest full-season champions sit just over the line. The 2005 Padres took the NL West at 82-80. The 1973 Mets won the NL East at 82-79 after a late game was canceled. The 1994 Rangers led the AL West at 52-62 when the players’ strike ended that season, which is why that race never became an official losing-record title.

Houston and Texas are already under.500 with five games left. Go 5-0 and Houston finishes 83-79, a winning record and a champion no matter what Texas does. Go 2-3 and Houston finishes 80-82, which would be a losing-record division winner if Texas does not finish ahead. That path is live. So is 81-81. The West has spent the year proving it can produce a champion that would not have survived in a stronger division.

Cabrera did his Triple Crown work on a Tigers team that played into October as a genuine contender. Alvarez is doing his on a club that has been below.500 in late September and still might host a Wild Card Series. The individual season and the team season are not moving together, and that is the oddity of this West.

Three Astros Exited Tuesday With Injuries

Cristian Javier left after two scoreless innings with right groin tightness. He threw 45 pitches, 25 for strikes, walked two, and stranded three runners. He felt the tightness facing his last hitter in the second and came out before it got worse. He said he does not expect imaging and thinks treatment will be enough to make his next start.

The bullpen had to cover seven innings on the first night of a road trip that still has four games in Sacramento after Wednesday.

WHO CAME OUT AND WHO COVERED

• Cristian Javier: Two innings, right groin tightness, expects to make his next start after treatment.
• Brice Matthews: Left knee, banged up on a sliding catch in the second that robbed Josh Naylor, removed in the sixth after just returning from two months out with a knee sprain.
• Jeremy Peña: Hit on the right forearm in the eighth, ran the bases, scored on Alvarez’s homer, then came out; X-rays were negative, and Nick Allen took over at short.
• Daulton Varsho: Starting center fielder, already unavailable with a left wrist injury.
• The four-hitter: Rookie Miguel Ullola threw two innings of one-hit ball for his first major league win, then Bennett Sousa, AJ Blubaugh, and Logan VanWey finished it.

Manager Joe Espada called that group “our club right there.” He also said the injuries put Houston in a tough spot for the rest of the trip, with a taxi squad still working out at Triple-A Sugar Land if the club needs a healthy body in Seattle for Wednesday. Matthews had been back only a few days. Peña staying in to score and then leaving is the kind of September detail that can follow a team into the last weekend.

How Houston Can Still Win the AL West

Houston owns the head-to-head tiebreaker, so it only has to match Texas over the final five games. The Astros close at Seattle on Wednesday, then play four at the Athletics. Texas hosts the Mets twice more, then finishes at Minnesota. Win all five and Houston is the champion no matter what the Rangers do.

Walker set the target after the 7-0 win, and he did not leave room for scoreboard watching as a plan.

That’s what we can control. Around the league? Who knows. You try to hope it’s going to work out, but at the same time what we’ve got is we got five games ahead of us. Let’s go 5-0.

Christian Walker, Astros first baseman

IF HOUSTON FINISHES THE WEEK AT

• 5-0 (83-79): Houston wins the West no matter what Texas does, including a 5-0 Rangers finish that would only tie the record.
• 4-1 (82-80): Texas has to go 5-0 to finish ahead.
• 3-2 (81-81): Texas has to go 4-1 to finish ahead.
• 2-3 (80-82): Houston would be a losing-record champion unless Texas goes at least 3-2.
• 1-4 or 0-5: Texas needs only two wins, or one, to move in front.

Espada liked the at-bats from the first inning, the early runs, and the way Houston chased Gilbert in the fourth. He also said the injuries leave the club thinner than it wanted to be on a five-game road close. Ullola’s first win was the cleanest piece of that night, two innings that kept a 4-0 game from turning into a bullpen fire drill before Paredes and Alvarez added the last three runs.

White Sox Hold a Three-Game Edge for the Last Wild Card

If the season were seeded on these records, Houston would go in as the AL West winner and face Chicago in a Wild Card Series. The Rays have already clinched the East at 96-61. The current bracket also has the Yankees and Red Sox in, with the Guardians leading the Central. The leftover problem belongs to Texas.

The White Sox lead Texas by 3 games for the last American League wild card, at 81-76 against 78-79. Texas also loses a head-to-head tiebreaker to Chicago. Lose the West on a shared record with Houston, and the Rangers would need those five remaining games to make up ground on the White Sox just to keep October alive. The Mets and Twins are the teams in the way.

Houston’s path is simpler, and uglier. It can back into the division at 78-79 or 80-82 if Texas stumbles, and it can also close 5-0 and leave no argument. Alvarez can still win a batting title and a home run title on that club, and he can still fall short of a Triple Crown if Alonso holds the RBI lead. Tuesday gave him the 41st homer and the 100th RBI in the same game, and it gave his team a share of first place it had not held the night before. Five games will decide whether a losing record gets to raise a division flag.