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The AL Central is a complete mess
Thursday’s Say Hey, Baseball looks at the AL Central race, the Weird Baseball Hall of Fame, and the history of the Gatorade bath in baseball.
Photo by Ron Schwane/Getty Images
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The Twins are 29-26, under .500 at home, have been outscored by 29 runs, and are also two games ahead in the AL Central. The defending AL champion Cleveland Indians, meanwhile, are 29-28, outscoring their opponents but not by much, and just dropped a series to the NL West-leading Rockies. The Tigers, meanwhile, are right behind the two of them, sitting at .500 despite some serious rotation issues that have popped up already this season and limited them to a run differential of +3 despite scoring the fourth-most runs in the AL.
The AL Central is a complete mess, and somehow, the state of the first three teams in the standings don’t completely sum up why. This whole thing, from top to bottom, is messy as hell. The Royals sit just 4.5 games back of the Twins despite the fact that having multiple key pieces completely forgetting how to hit and a rotation where everyone pitching well besides Jason Vargas is on the DL. The Royals have been outscored by 50 runs, and yet they’re somehow half-a-game up on the rebuilding White Sox, who have only been outscored by three.
Just fives games separate first place and last place in the division, and while they aren’t the only one where things are that close-ish — the Blue Jays are in last place in the AL East and six back, and the Pirates are 5.5 back in the NL Central — the AL Central is where things seem the weirdest. The Jays, at 29-31, would be ahead of the Royals and White Sox. And the Pirates at least have the excuse of having a series of terrible things happen to them that put them in this situation.
The White Sox were supposed to be bad, and there was a high chance of the Royals being even worse, and yet, they’re both oddly close to the division leader. It’s only June, of course, so these sorts of things can clear up in a hurry. The Indians are about to face the White Sox, even, so we could see some separation in two directions after that series concludes. As of right now, though, the AL Central is a mess, and things are close enough that it could be anyone’s division.
Maybe if we’re lucky, the AL Central will give us what the 1994 strike robbed us of: a division winner with a record under .500. Come on, Twins and Indians and Tigers: you can all just be a little bit worse, for history’s sake.
- Trey Mancini swatted a pinch-hit, game-tying home run in the ninth inning of Wednesday’s Orioles-Pirates matchup, then hit a game-winning homer in extras. That’s never happened before in O’s history, so not only was it just a flat-out cool moment for non-Pirates’ fans, but it happens to be historic, too.
- Scooter Gennett’s four-homer game is definitely a weird baseball moment, but where does it rank in this Weird Baseball Hall of Fame that Grant Brisbee put together?
- The A’s and Wendy’s Twitter accounts got into a fight that involved jokes about diarrhea. 2017 is something.
- Wendy’s really should have used the A’s defense against them in that fight, because it is a trash fire.
- Max Scherzer swore at himself on the mound before delivering a pitch, to the point that it’s really disappointing he wasn’t mic’d up.
- Here’s Britni de la Cretaz on the collateral damage of Gatorade victory showers.
- The Braves are ... not good. So who do they trade first this summer?
- While Mike Trout is injured, Michael Baumann is trying to figure out who the best player in baseball is in his absence.
- The Cardinals are not built like a playoff team.
- Here’s what Jean Segura’s five-year, $70 million extension means for the Mariners.
- Here’s a mock draft based entirely on the strength of player names.
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