Athletics sit at 64-98 after entering 2026 with their best playoff odds in years

What happened

The Athletics entered the 2026 season carrying their best playoff odds in some time — 21.4%, per FanGraphs — built around an offensive core of Nick Kurtz, Shea Langeliers, Brent Rooker, Tyler Soderstrom, and Jacob Wilson, and bolstered by the winter acquisition of Jeff McNeil. As of late July, the club sits at 64-98 (.395), eliminated from both the AL West division race and the Wild Card race, and riding a two-game losing streak into a weekend series at Minnesota.

That gap between preseason optimism and midsummer reality is the question FanGraphs is now asking directly: when will the Athletics be truly competitive again?

Why it matters

The 21.4% playoff odds FanGraphs assigned the Athletics before the season were not a rounding error — they represented a genuine organizational inflection point. The franchise had not posted a winning record since 2021, per FanGraphs, and its last stretch of meaningful October relevance ended after the COVID-shortened 2020 season. The 2025 club went 76-86. The 2026 version, at 64-98 through late July, is on a trajectory that makes 76-86 look like a high-water mark worth commemorating.

The preseason logic was straightforward enough to be almost charming in retrospect: lean on a legitimate offensive core, cobble together enough pitching to avoid being on the wrong end of every high-scoring game, and let the young bats carry the club into contention. Per FanGraphs, the Athletics were even confident enough to be on the receiving end of a salary dump for once, picking up McNeil over the winter — a detail that read, at the time, as a sign of organizational ambition. The 2026 standings have offered a more complicated response.

FanGraphs also notes that the club still plays in what it describes as a minor league ballpark, a circumstance that frames every roster decision and every competitive timeline conversation in ways that most franchises do not have to navigate. The piece refers to them as the "Sacramento-ish Athletics," which is either a branding opportunity or a cautionary tale, depending on your tolerance for unresolved geography.

The numbers

The Athletics' record of 64-98 (.395) places them fourth in the AL West, 17 games back in the division. In the Wild Card picture, they rank 11th, sitting 20.0 games relative to the cut line — a number that does not invite close reading. The division race is over. The Wild Card race is over. What remains is the schedule.

The preseason figure worth holding onto is that 21.4% playoff odds mark. FanGraphs characterized it as the club's best in some time, which is both accurate and a little melancholy when set against the current standings. The 2025 Athletics went 76-86; the 2026 version is on a trajectory that makes that record look, in hindsight, like a floor rather than a ceiling.

Where the club stands

The Athletics are 64-98, fourth in the AL West, eliminated from the division and the Wild Card. They have lost their last two games and head into a three-game road series at Target Field against the Minnesota Twins.

Friday's game features Jacob Lopez opposing Zebby Matthews. Saturday sends Brady Basso to the mound against Kendry Rojas. Sunday closes the series with Jeffrey Springs facing Connor Prielipp. It is the kind of late-July schedule that asks a rebuilding club to find something worth playing for beyond the standings — development reps, organizational evaluation, the slow accumulation of information about who can handle a major league at-bat and who cannot.

The offensive core that FanGraphs identified as the club's most credible path to relevance — Kurtz, Langeliers, Rooker, Soderstrom, Wilson — remains the framework around which any future competitive window gets constructed. The 2026 season has not answered the question of whether that core is enough. It has, however, sharpened the question considerably.

What we don't know yet

FanGraphs poses the competitive timeline question directly but, per the available material, does not resolve it. The piece notes that things have not gone according to the preseason scenario without specifying what, precisely, went wrong — whether the pitching failed to hold up its end of the arrangement, whether the offense underperformed its projection, or whether some combination of factors produced a 64-98 record from a roster that entered the year with genuine optimism attached to it.

The McNeil acquisition is mentioned as a marker of organizational confidence — the Athletics being on the receiving end of a salary dump rather than the originating end — but the material does not detail how McNeil has performed or what his presence has meant to the club's 2026 results.

The broader question FanGraphs is asking — when does this franchise become genuinely competitive again — remains open. The preseason odds establish where expectations sat. The current standings establish where the club is. The distance between those two points is the story, and FanGraphs, to its credit, is not pretending otherwise.

What to watch

The Minnesota series this weekend offers a small but real window into how the Athletics' young pitching is developing. Lopez, Basso, and Springs are the scheduled starters across Friday, Saturday, and Sunday — three consecutive games that will not affect the standings but will add to the organizational record on each arm.

The larger question, the one FanGraphs is circling, is whether the offensive core that made 21.4% playoff odds feel reasonable before the season can anchor a legitimate contender in the near future. The 2026 season has not provided an encouraging answer, but it has not necessarily invalidated the underlying premise either. A 64-98 record tells you where a team is; it does not always tell you where it is going.

What the Athletics need, and what the FanGraphs piece is implicitly asking about, is a pitching infrastructure that can match the offensive ambition the front office has spent recent years assembling. The preseason plan acknowledged as much — good offense, enough pitching, stay out of the wrong end of slugfests. Whether that formula is still viable, or whether the 2026 standings represent something more structurally discouraging, is the question that will define the next chapter of this franchise's timeline, wherever it ends up playing its home games.