Is This the Weakest American League in MLB History?

There is something about the 2026 MLB season that just feels all wrong. And without putting too fine a point on it, that something is the American League.

Suffice it to say that the Junior Circuit is about as hard to look away from as a stadium full of dumpster fires. Entering Thursday, there was only one AL club with a top-10 winning percentage. The other nine were all National League members.

It can't be avoided that this is happening largely because NL teams have stomped their AL counterparts. The NL has a .583 winning percentage in interleague play, the highest such mark in its history.

It sounds bad for the AL because it is bad for the AL. That's not the only number that sets off alarms and flashing red lights.

The American League Is Threatening a Historically Bad Season

To date, the worst year either league has ever had was the National League in 2006.

The New York Mets won 97 games that year, but not a single other NL team topped even 88 wins and only six of the 16 finished with winning records. The NL's total winning percentage was .489.

Well, the AL's winning percentage this year is .468. If it holds, it would be the lowest for either of the two leagues in history.

Yeah, yeah. We're aware that this point is as dubious as it is damning. Until interleague play arrived in 1997, the AL and NL were isolated from one another and therefore could achieve only a single overall winning percentage: .500. That's just how the math mathed back then.

Even so, the "2006 National League" energy surrounding the AL is real. As things stand, FanGraphs projects three AL teams to win more than 85 games, with the median win total for the AL at 78.3 wins. Not even a .500 team, in other words.

What the Heck Is Even Happening in the AL?

It would be one thing if the AL's struggles could be traced to bad teams turning out even worse than expected. If, say, the Chicago White Sox were 0-24 instead of 10-15, it would be more embarrassing than surprising.

No, the real shocker is how many seemingly good teams have been just plain bad.

The truth of it is here in this table, which shows how AL teams' FanGraphs odds of making the playoffs have changed since Opening Day:

Team	W-L	OD Playoff %	Current Playoff %	Change
Cleveland Guardians	14-12	15.2	38.3	+23.1
New York Yankees	16-9	78.8	90.8	+14.0
Minnesota Twins	12-13	28.4	41.5	+13.1
Detroit Tigers	14-12	60.2	72.1	+11.9
Texas Rangers	13-12	46.3	58.0	+11.7
Athletics	13-12	21.4	33.0	+11.6
Los Angeles Angels	12-14	4.1	8.9	+4.8
Tampa Bay Rays	13-11	28.9	33.5	+4.6
Baltimore Orioles	12-13	44.5	44.7	+0.2
Chicago White Sox	10-15	1.1	0.8	-0.3
Seattle Mariners	11-15	79.6	69.8	-9.8
Houston Astros	10-16	32.8	20.2	-12.8
Toronto Blue Jays	10-14	52.8	34.9	-17.9
Boston Red Sox	9-16	60.8	35.3	-25.5
Kansas City Royals	8-17	44.8	16.4	-28.4

For all of MLB, the five teams at the bottom of this table account for five of the seven biggest negative swings in playoff odds since the start of the season. In other words, the key ingredient of this sausage is disappointment.

As for whether the sausage can be unmade and turned into something better, let's do a quick round of "Buy or Sell?" for whether each team is as screwed as it seems.

Seattle Mariners: Sell

They're mostly losing because they're not hitting, and that'll change once Cal Raleigh, Julio Rodríguez and Josh Naylor get warm. In the meantime, it helps to have the sixth-best ERA in MLB.

Houston Astros: Buy

Oh, they're so screwed. Their pitching staff is badly banged up, hence the MLB-high 150 runs allowed. Even with an offense as good as theirs, it's hard to overcome a flaw like that.

Toronto Blue Jays: Buy

The AL East is the deepest division in the American League, and what the Blue Jays are guilty of is not surviving an early-season wave of injuries that won't necessarily be over soon.

Boston Red Sox: Sell

Might be going against our better judgment here, but Garrett Crochet rocking a 7.88 ERA just isn't something that will last. The pitching in general is strong, and too many hitters are underperforming.

Kansas City Royals: Buy

The Royals need to thrive on their pitching, and there are just too many red flags. The bullpen is a complete mess with a 6.29 ERA, while Cole Ragans and Kris Bubic are both battling stuff problems.

All of the above was hardly scientific, but a safe assumption either way is that the AL won't go 5-for-5 with its primarily stragglers catching up. And if that coincides with some of the surprise teams falling back to earth, the sluggish pace at which the AL has begun the year may well be permanent.

The NL Is Winning the Vibes Battle

What makes the divide between the AL and NL especially strange is that two of the supposed powers in the NL are playing like…well, like AL teams.

The Mets' payroll is going to cost them $500 million, and that money has gone toward a 9-16 record so far. At least they no longer have the league's longest active losing streak, as the Philadelphia Phillies—a $370 million team in their own right—are now also 8-17 after a nine-game skid.

Then again, why dwell on the negative when the NL holds literally 90 percent of the 10 best teams in MLB?

It's a real "vibe check" kind of list, naturally headlined by the Los Angeles Dodgers (17-8) as they quest for the National League's first-ever World Series three-peat. And could it be that the need to keep up with them is a rising tide lifting all boats?

Usual suspects like the Atlanta Braves (18-8), San Diego Padres (17-8), Milwaukee Brewers (13-11) and Arizona Diamondbacks (14-11) were always going to be in the mix. But then you have amazing bits like the entire NL Central being over .500, which is hard not to trace back to various concerted efforts to get better.

The Chicago Cubs (16-9), Cincinnati Reds (16-9) and Pittsburgh Pirates (14-11) each shifted decisively in a buy-in direction over the winter. And while the St. Louis Cardinals (14-10) went the other way, they at least angled for a culture shift under Chaim Bloom's leadership. If Jordan Walker is any indication, it's paying off.

If all this is a downstream effect of the Dodgers' dominance, it makes for a hilarious backdrop for the notion that they're ruining baseball. The lesson for the AL may well be that it needs a Dodgers-like team of its own, sort of like what the Yankees, Astros and Red Sox were at various points in the past.

In the meantime, the entire AL just needs to focus on shaping up. If the Mariners and Red Sox can indeed make that happen, that alone would go a long way toward making this slow start feel like ancient history. As to the other three stragglers, it's especially hard to count out the Blue Jays after what they did last year.

Until then, there isn't any question that the AL is playing from behind. And with a deficit this large, it may well take the entire season to undo it.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.