How the West was Won: 2026 AL West Projections and Win Totals
So, you're saying there's a chance? Well, it's complicated
I tried everything I could think of, but being a numbers guy, I eventually had to face the music.
Despite being the lonely dude screaming from the mountaintop (is that where lonely dudes scream from?) that we can’t trust the fWAR projections, there is one immutable truth - fWAR is a 0-sum game, capped at 1,000 per season. If you have more, someone else has less or vice versa, and more often than not, the team with more wins.
Don’t misunderstand - I said more often than not, but not always.
So yes, there’s a chance for the Astros, just not a great one.
Fangraphs pegs such chances at 13.3% (1 in 7.5) to win the division and 33.7% to make the playoffs, while placing the Astros at 80.4 wins.
But more than that, the site projects the Mariners to compile 6.1 more fWAR than Houston (as of March 24).
With 1,000 fWAR divvied out over 2,430 games, that means each win earns .41 fWAR across the league on average, or alternatively, about 2.4 wins per fWAR pm average.
Teams accumulate fWAR at different rates, so it’s not as simple as multiplying the estimated fWAR times 2.4 to estimate wins, and the Mariners are not going to win 113 games that calculation would give us.
But we know preseason fWAR is handed out like candy, 18% above the possible high, and adding that adjustment to the calculation brings me to these more reasonable projected win totals (and order of finish) for the AL West.
Important Caveats
Projections are fun, but almost always incorrect. After all, the players have to go out on the field and do it.
Injuries, of course, play a big role too, as any 2025 Astros fan knows. We know of some injuries that affected these projections, but there are many more we don’t know about because they haven’t happened yet and are impossible to predict and time.
Trades, as the season goes along and most obviously around the trade deadline, are also something that can shift the projected win total of a team.
For those reasons and many more, understand that this is just a starting point and not the end.
Last Year
One of my big issues with the fWAR projections is that it assumes, almost literally, that everyone is going to get better.
Take the AL West, for example.
Every team is expected to get better (fWAR-wise), with the Angels apparently re-signing Shohei while we weren’t looking.
This is largely true across the league - everyone gets more fWAR! That isn’t possible; as noted above, the league’s upper limit is 1,000.
But this chart is instructive in at least one sense - the teams finished in the order of fWAR accumulated (red bars).
Starting from Behind
The conclusion I’ve come to with all of this is not that the Astros can’t win the West, it’s that I wouldn’t project them to, and that they are starting from behind and have a long way to go to catch up, at least theoretically.
As mentioned, injuries, trades, over- and underperformance can go a long way to closing (or widening) the gap.
But there are real concerns with the 2026 version of the Astros - their rotation is full of questions, the bullpen is injured, the outfield might be one of the least productive in MLB, and that’s just off the top of my head.
This position-by-position breakdown speaks volumes.
At the starting pole, the Mariners have the advantage, and it’s a significant one.
As always, thanks for reading!