In the last 30 seasons of Major League Baseball, no team had made the playoffs with the lowest Opening Day payroll in the league.
Until now.
Against all odds, the Oakland A's are heading to the postseason. How on earth did this happen?
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FanGraphs has tracked each team's playoff chances throughout the regular season. Oakland opened the season with just a 9.2 percent chance of making the playoffs. That number dipped to a season-low 2.9 percent on April 14, when the A's fell to 5-10.
Oakland's chances remained below 20 percent through the month of June, dropping to just 3.1 percent on June 15 when they were 34-36 and 11 games out of the second Wild Card position.
But then something happened. Despite numerous injuries to their starting rotation, the A's caught fire. Oakland would win 21 of its next 27 games to reach the All-Star break at 55-42. Suddenly, the A's playoff chances were up to 30.9 percent.
Oakland Athletics
Surely this was just a fluke. There was no way Oakland could maintain this level of play into the second half.
But they did. The A's won nine of their first 13 games out of the break, raising their playoff chances to 51.8 percent on August 2, the first time all season they had crossed the 50 percent barrier.
As August went on, the A's just kept winning. Following a 3-2 victory against the Dodgers on August 8, Oakland's playoff chances reached 70 percent for the first time. On August 21, they climbed above 80 percent. The A's finished August with a record of 81-55 and a 90.9 percent probability of reaching the postseason.
On September 24, that number hit 100 and it became official. For the first time since 2014, the Oakland A's are going to the playoffs.