After a bit of thought, I take the spirit of the question to be "Does this team deserve to be a postseason team?" Or, to generalize, does whoever earns the second wild card berth this year deserve to be in the postseason? In most years, no. As I write this it appears that the second wild card team could easily have the worst record for an AL postseason team since the current format came into use in 2012. Last year the second wild card team won 89 games. In 2015 it was 86, in 2014 it was 88, in 2013 it was 92. In 2012 Detroit won the AL Central with 88 and the second wild card team had 93 wins. Two teams with 89 and 90 wins, respectively, finished out of the postseason. I think it's a combination of two things. One, having two dominant teams, Houston and Cleveland, each of whom could finish with 100 wins, and, two, having a lot of teams at a similar middling level. This year's second wild card team, whoever it turns out to be, will be the one of this mediocre group finishing with a few more wins than the rest of them. Back in July it was not unreasonable to look at the Twins, project us to finish with 83 wins, and assume that this would not be good enough to make the postseason. After all, with as many teams as there were in the hunt it would be certain that at least one of them would make a big move forward, right? Well, here we are with ESPN giving us a 95.2% chance of a postseason berth. And we did that with a 36-31 record since the All-Star break. Not exactly a big move forward, but this year it turns out it's better to be lucky than good.