Athletics sit 64-98 and eliminated, a long way from their 21.4% playoff odds

What happened

The Athletics entered the 2026 season carrying genuine optimism — a 21.4% playoff probability, per FanGraphs, that represented their best outlook in some time. The plan was straightforward enough: lean on a credible offensive core, patch together enough pitching to stay competitive in close games, and see what happened. What has happened, per FanGraphs, is a 64-98 record, elimination from both the AL West division race and the Wild Card race, and a two-game losing streak heading into a weekend series at Target Field in Minnesota.

The gap between January's projections and late July's reality is, to put it gently, substantial.

Why it matters

FanGraphs framed the 2026 Athletics as a franchise at an inflection point. The club had not posted a winning record since 2021, and their last stretch of genuine playoff relevance ended after the COVID-shortened 2020 season. The 2025 team went 76-86 — not good, but at least a number that left room for imagination. The 2026 version has moved in the wrong direction, and the 21.4% playoff odds that felt like a modest but real threshold now read as a high-water mark the team never came close to reaching.

What made those odds plausible, per FanGraphs, was an offensive core built around Nick Kurtz, Shea Langeliers, Brent Rooker, Tyler Soderstrom, and Jacob Wilson. The most plausible breakout scenario, as FanGraphs described it, involved that group generating enough runs to compensate for a pitching staff that was always going to require some creative assembly. The Athletics were also, notably, on the receiving end of a salary dump for once — picking up Jeff McNeil over the winter, a move FanGraphs flagged as a sign of at least modest organizational confidence heading into the year.

The confidence, and the odds, have not survived contact with the schedule.

Where the club stands

The Athletics' record stands at 64-98 (.395), placing them fourth in the AL West with 17 games separating them from the division leader. Their Wild Card standing is equally bleak: ranked 11th, sitting 20.0 games relative to the cut line. Both elimination markers — division and Wild Card — are now formally checked off, and the club carries a two-game losing streak into the weekend.

The upcoming series at Target Field against the Twins lays out as follows: Jacob Lopez opposing Zebby Matthews on Friday, Brady Basso against Kendry Rojas on Saturday, and Jeffrey Springs facing Connor Prielipp on Sunday. None of those matchups carry postseason weight. They carry instead the quieter weight of roster evaluation that defines the back half of a lost season — which is its own kind of stakes, even if the standings column has stopped moving in any meaningful direction.

FanGraphs noted that the franchise had not been truly competitive since the early 2020s, and the current record does nothing to complicate that characterization. The 76-86 finish in 2025 was at least a number that could be spun as a foundation. A 64-98 mark through late July is harder to frame as progress, regardless of how the final weeks resolve.

FanGraphs also noted that the club still plays in what it described as a minor league ballpark — a detail that has defined the franchise's transitional identity — and the on-field results have not yet provided a counternarrative to the instability surrounding it.

What we don't know yet

FanGraphs posed the question directly in the piece's headline — when will the Athletics be truly competitive again? — and the article does not appear to have arrived at a firm answer before the source text cuts off. The piece was framing the question as an open one, not resolving it, which means the timeline for any genuine contention window remains unspecified in the available material.

What is also unresolved: whether the offensive core that made the 21.4% odds feel reasonable — Kurtz, Langeliers, Rooker, Soderstrom, Wilson — has performed to the level that was anticipated, or whether the pitching situation proved more unmanageable than the optimistic scenario allowed for. FanGraphs establishes the expectation; the current record establishes the outcome; the gap between them is not yet fully explained by what is available here.

Jeff McNeil's role in the 2026 season, and whether the acquisition delivered on the organizational confidence it was meant to signal, is similarly unaddressed in the available material.

What to watch

When a club is eliminated this early in the second half, the schedule stops being about wins and starts being about information — which young players hold up, which pitchers can be trusted in a rotation spot, which parts of the offensive core look like genuine building blocks versus pleasant surprises that may not repeat.

General league mechanics offer some context for how teams in this position typically operate: the active roster expands from 26 to 28 players on September 1, which gives clubs carrying young talent an opportunity to get additional looks at depth pieces without forcing difficult roster decisions. For a franchise still searching for its competitive footing, those extra weeks of evaluation can carry real organizational value even when the standings have long since gone quiet.

The three-game series at Target Field this weekend, with Lopez, Basso, and Springs taking the ball, offers a small window into the pitching side of that equation. The larger question — the one FanGraphs was asking before the full scope of the season became clear — is whether the 2026 collapse represents a detour from a real competitive window or a sign that the window was never quite as open as the 21.4% odds suggested. That answer will take longer than a weekend series in Minnesota to arrive at.