In the semis, I beat the team that I finished second to; they had 119 (!) wins. My luck ran out in the finals, losing to a team that had 106 wins. Tough league!
Disclaimer: This was a 70s mystery league. It would have been more impressive if this had happened in a 20xx league.
The whole premise of this thread is wrong as Geekor points out. How did the poster miss that?
By the way, the 2005 Cleveland Indians won 96 games and missed the playoffs entirely! If it can happen in real life it can happen in SOM and pretty much vice versa as well.