HOUSTON – For the fourth year in a row, the Houston Astros are your American League West division champions.
The team clinched the division Tuesday night with a 4-3 win over the Seattle Mariners.
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After going down 3-1 in the third inning, Kyle Tucker and Jason Hayward hit home runs to give the Astros the crucial 4-3 advantage. Both teams went scoreless over the final four innings, and lefty Josh Hader struck out three batters over the final 1.1 innings to secure the win and the division for Houston.
The team has now secured a spot in the playoffs. This comes after the team started the year with a 7-19 record and didn’t crawl back to .500 until near the end of June.
The Astros have one more game in the three-game series against the Mariners starting Wednesday at 1:10 p.m. Then, they’ll wrap up the regular season with a three-game road trip to take on the Cleveland Guardians.
With the AL West now clinched, the Astros have a 99% to land the No. 3 seed in the playoffs. That means that barring a biblically unlikely turn of events, Houston will have to host a three-game Wild Card series from Oct. 1 through Oct. 3.
This Wild Card series will most likely be against the Kansas City Royals or the Detroit Tigers, but the Minnesota Twins, Seattle Mariners, Boston Red Sox and Tampa Bay Rays are still mathematically in play for the No. 6 seed.