As observers of Major League Baseball final scores, standings, and generalized fan anxiety are probably aware — acutely aware, in some cases — the Detroit Tigers and New York Mets are presently enduring collapses of varying degrees.
The “greatest” of these is of course the Tigers. As recently as July 9, they held a 14-game lead in the American League Central. The Cleveland Guardians, though, have whittled away at that once-massive deficit, and of late they’ve made up serious ground. That’s because the Guards going into Tuesday’s full slate of games are 16-4 in September. At the same time, the Tigers are just 5-13 this month. In large measure because of those dueling recent trends, that 14-game lead is down to one. There are collapses, and then there are core-reactor meltdowns. The 2025 AL Central race is potentially an example of the latter.
2025 MLB playoff picture: Baseball standings, tiebreakers, clinch scenarios with Yankees’ magic number at one
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As for the Mets, it’s not so much about the National League East, which the Philadelphia Phillies have clinched. Rather, it’s about the fact that the Mets have squandered their playoff position. While they’re tied with the Cincinnati Reds for the third and final NL wild card spot, the Reds hold the head-to-head tiebreaker. That means the Reds will get the bid if they wind up with the same record, and that means the Mets no longer control their own destiny. That’s quite a tumble for the Queenslanders. At the close of play on June 12, the Mets were an MLB-best 45-24. Since then, they’re 35-52, which comes to a winning percentage of .402. Stated another way, they’ve played like a 97-loss team for more than half the season.
The Mets at that higher water mark of their season led the NL East by a comfy-enough 5 ½ games; they were in playoff position in the NL by a bigger margin than that. Really, it’s about what’s happened recently. As recently as Sept. 4, the Mets were tied for the second wild card spot and were six games ahead of the Reds. Barely two weeks later, that lead is gone and the Mets are out of playoff position for the first time since April 4, when they were 4-3.
All of this brings to mind whether what’s happening with the Tigers and Mets in particular might soon land them on any list of worst collapses in MLB history. Let’s have a quick look at their “competition,” or a cohort the 2025 Tigers and Mets hope very much not to be among once the postseason begins. Collapses are listed in reverse chronological order.
The Rangers led the AL West by four games with just nine games left in the regular season. The rub, though, is that six of those nine games were against the second-place Oakland A’s. The A’s won five of them, including a sweep to end the regular season and claim the division title by a single game. That was merely the finishing move for Oakland, who was five games under .500 at the end of June and 13 games out of first. A 19-5 July, however, set the scene for the A’s comeback. The Rangers still snared a wild card spot, but they were bounced in the Wild Card Game by the Baltimore Orioles.
The Red Sox in 2011 narrowly led the division over the Yankees when the calendar hit September. That was fraught, but what seemed safe was Boston’s nine-game edge over the Rays for the fallback wild card spot. That’s a big lead at any point on the calendar, let alone the last month of the regular season. Over that last month, the Red Sox didn’t win a single series and went 1-6 against those Rays. On the final day of the regular season, Sox closer Jonathan Papelbon blew a ninth-inning lead, while the Rays came back from down 7-0 to beat the Yankees, claim the wild card, and end Boston’s season.
Yes, 2011 was a good year for soul-crushing stretch drives in MLB. The Braves weren’t a threat to the mighty Phillies atop the NL East as September arrived, but Atlanta did hold a seemingly secure 7 ½-game lead over the St. Louis Cardinals in the wild card race on Sept. 1. The Braves then faltered. They went 9-18 in September and ended the season on a five-game losing streak. They were tied with the Cardinals going into the final day of the regular season, but a Cardinals win paired with the Braves’ loss to the Phillies in 13 innings kept Atlanta home on the couch for the playoffs.
4. 2009 Detroit Tigers
At the close of play on Sept. 6, the Tigers were the only AL Central team with a winning record, and they held a seven-game lead over the 68-68 Twins. What happened wasn’t so much a collapse — the Tigers went 17-15 from Sept. 1 through the end of the scheduled regular season — as it was a surge for Minnesota, who ended the regular season on an 18-3 heater. The last of those wins came in the Game 163 tiebreaker – a 6-5 win over the Tigers in 12 innings.
5. 2007 New York Mets
On Sept. 13, 2007, the Mets had the best record in baseball and held a seven-game lead over the Phillies in the NL East. A mid-September sweep at the hands of those Phillies started the slide, and the Mets went on to lose 12 of their last 17 games, all while the Phils kept winning. For the Mets, an 8-1 home loss to the last-place Florida Marlins on the last day of the regular season sealed their fate.
6. 1995 California Angels
When August dawned in ’95, the Angels held an 11-game lead in the AL West. More than a week later on Aug. 9, that lead was still 11 games. At that point, though, swoon began. The Halos on Aug. 21 began a stretch that would see them lose 12 of 13 and 13 of 15. They’d rebound from that only to drop nine in a row starting on Sept. 13 and fall to second place behind the Seattle Mariners. In what now seems a flourish designed to add to the Angels misery, they won five in a row to surge into a tie with Seattle after Game 162. That forced a tiebreaker game, which Randy Johnson and the M’s won easily, 9-1.
7. 1978 Boston Red Sox
Bucky Expletivin’ Dent’s unlikely Fenway homer in the famed tiebreaker game was the killing blow for the ’78 Red Sox. At the close of play on July 9, the Red Sox led the Milwaukee Brewers in the AL East by nine games. The Yankees, meantime, were in fourth place and 14 games behind Boston. At that point, though, the Yankees became an entirely different team. Billy Martin’s club went 53-21 the rest of the way (including a 20-3 mark from Aug. 25 through Sept. 16). As part of that streak, the Yankees claimed a four-game sweep of the Red Sox in Fenway that came to be known as the “Boston Massacre” because the invaders outscored them 42-9 over those four games. The Sox actually managed to tie the Yankees after trailing them by 3 ½ games on Sept. 16 and force that fateful tiebreaker game, but the story of ’78 will always be Boston’s hapless summer.
The Miracle Mets got a big assist in the attainment of said miracle by the Cubs. The Cubs spent more than 150 days in first place during the inaugural season of divisional play, and they had a nine-game lead in the freshly minted NL East as late as Aug. 16. In September, though, the Cubs’ hopes died a shocking death. They went 9-18 to close out the regular season and endured a seven-game losing streak early in September. Meantime, the Mets went 24-8 over that same span, and that was on the heels of a 21-10 August. Not only did the Cubs blow their big lead in the division, but they blew it to the extent that they finished eight games behind a Mets team that looked buried in the middle of August.
9. 1964 Philadelphia Phillies
With just 12 games left to play on Sept. 20, the Phillies led the St. Louis Cardinals by 6 ½ games in the NL standings. At that point, though, the Phils proceeded to drop 10 straight. Before the Cardinals took charge, the Phillies ceded first place to the Cincinnati Reds. However, the Cardinals, who went 22-10 from Sept. 1 onward, surged into first place by taking two of three from the Reds and then sweeping the Phillies in the penultimate series of the regular season. The Phillies finished tied with the Reds for second place, each team a game behind the Cardinals.
10. 1951 Brooklyn Dodgers
This season of course gets remembered for Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” home run in the tiebreaker series that sent the Giants to the World Series.
None of that, though, could’ve come to pass without the Dodgers’ late-season collapse. As late as Aug. 11, the Dodgers were a seemingly insurmountable 13 ½ games ahead of the Giants in the NL standings. New York, though, got magma-hot to close out the regular season, as they won 18 in a row at one point and were 37-7 over their final 44 games.
