AL Wild Card Standings: Astros collapse helps Guardians gain tiebreaker advantage 

For most of the past month, the Cleveland Guardians have been looking up at the Seattle Mariners in the American League Wild Card standings. That’s no longer the case, as the Mariners took the lead in the American League West on Sunday thanks to a win from them combined with a Houston loss. 

And while that doesn’t have an immediate impact on the Wild Card standings (the Guardians are still 2 1/2 games behind the Astros for the final Wild Card spot despite going 6-1 across the last week), it does give them an added advantage given they hold the tiebreaker over the Astros. 

The Guardians hold a key tiebreaker advantage over the Astros 

The first tiebreaker used in playoff races is head-to-head record, which would help the Guardians in this case since they hold the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Astros. They have that thanks to their three-game sweep over the Astros at Daikin Park in July combined with the Guardians winning one game over the Astros in a three-game series in June.

The Rangers are a 1/2 game ahead of the Guardians in the Wild Card standings, which also adds another complication. 

The good news for the Guardians is that the three teams ahead of them are about to beat up on each other. The Rangers and Astros are about to start a huge three-game series on Monday (which means the idle Guardians will gain a 1/2 game on one team ahead of them regardless), before the Rangers welcome the Mariners to Globe Life Field for a three-game weekend series. 

Meanwhile, the Guardians start a three-game series with the Tigers on Tuesday before traveling to Minnesota for a four-game series over the weekend. Although the Guardians haven’t led the American League Central since March, they have a pathway to win the division crown thanks to that series against the Tigers. 

The Tigers have a 6 1/2 lead in the division after dropping two of three games against the Marlins in the weekend, but the Guardians still have six games remaining across the last two weeks. They’ll need to sweep both those series to have a shot at capitalizing on that slim chance, but they passed their first test this weekend when they took care of the lowly White Sox.

While the Guardians haven’t announced their pitching plans for the entire series, they’re sending the red-hot Joey Cantillo to the mound on Tuesday, where he’ll go against Casey Mize. Cantillo’s been excellent since the Guardians shifted to a six-man rotation, but he’ll have his work cut out for him against the Tigers’ lineup. 

Jack Flaherty will get the ball for Detroit on Wednesday and Tarik Skubal will get the start on Thursday after avoiding an injury scare over the weekend. 

For the longest time, it seemed like the Guardians’ only path to make the postseason would be via the Wild Card. That’s no longer the case.