The AL Central is a mess

The Tigers sold off key players a year ago, in the hopes of shedding payroll, adding prospects, and getting back into a competitive space in a few years’ time. The Royals, while not explicitly tanking, lost Eric Hosmer and Lorenzo Cain and weren’t very good before that, either. The White Sox, well, the White Sox were already deep into their rebuilding, so expectations were low there, too.

The Indians and Twins, on the other hand, represented the AL Central in the postseason last year, and both were expected to be pretty good in 2018, too. To this point, though, neither has looked much better than the AL Central’s teams that expected to lose.

Cleveland is 24-24, a .500 record that also happens to be at the top of the division. The Indians have 10 fewer wins than the AL East’s first-place team, the Red Sox. The Twins are in second, 1.5 games back, with a 21-24 record: Minnesota is six games back in the wild card race already. Detroit is 21-28, and just 3.5 back of Cleveland. The Royals (8 back) and White Sox (8.5 behind) are further behind, and that gap will grow even if the Indians and Twins don’t get much better. But still, it’s a little weird that we’re nearly two months into the season and the entire AL Central is somewhere between meh and [looks away in disgust].

The good news is that Cleveland and Minnesota should both be better than this in the long run: it is just May 25, after all, so we’re still a few days short of everyone incorrectly citing”quarter pole” on Memorial Day. Maybe not this weekend, though, as Cleveland is already facing the defending-champion (and still awesome) Astros, while the Twins have the Mariners. Yes, we’re still early enough in the season where the Mariners can be considered a challenge: that’s how you really know Cleveland and Minnesota can both turn things around.