Hovering around 0.500 would be brutal. There are a ton of pieces hitting free agency in the offseason, and letting them all walk for nothing while also missing the playoffs would be tough to recover from.
Encarnacion, Bautista, Dickey, Saunders, Cecil, Storen, Smoak, Floyd is a lot of wins to replace, especially with $85M already committed to five guys (Tulo, Martin, Donaldson, Estrada, Happ), only one of which is above average. It really is for the best that they sell if it looks like the playoffs aren't going to happen. They need assets to actually field a team in 2017.
It would be nice if there was a way to rid themselves of Tulo and Martin and create clean slate in the offseason, but that's probably a pipe dream.