This doesn’t necessarily mean the team will finish in last place next season. First off, divisions are obviously luck of the draw. The Mariners wouldn’t have finished at the bottom if they had been in the same division as the lowly Tigers and Royals. The Mariners had some brief fun but for the rest of the season, the AL West looked fairly tough.
The Angels were over .500 until early August when the freefall began. The Rangers were in wild card position for most of the summer until they probably remembered their actual rebuilding selves. The Astros were the Astros (whether dirty cheaters or not) while the A’s continued to shock the world for their first consecutive playoff berths since 2013-2014.