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 AL Central is a mess
Friday’s Say Hey, Baseball notices the AL Central’s bad-on-purpose teams aren’t much worse than the ones that tried.
Photo by Jon Durr/Getty Images
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.
- The Astros entered play on Thursday with a team ERA of 2.39, and that figure is unchanged after defeating the Indians, 8-2. All I can muster is “LOL,” but Grant Brisbee got that and a little bit more out.
- Ahahah! What the heck is this play?
- Let’s take a step back from whether the bullpenning strategy will work or whether it’s anti-labor: is it going to suck to watch?
- “Juiced” isn’t the right word for what’s happened to the baseballs in MLB, but another study confirms something has definitely changed to make them fly out of stadiums at historic rates.
- Rock-paper-scissors baseball is a thing you can learn about in this week’s iteration of Whitney McIntosh’s Mound Visits.
- Denard Span hip-checked a fan while flying into the stands on Thursday. Whoops.
- Danny Farquar, who suffered a brain hemorrhage in April, will throw out the first pitch for the White Sox on June 1.
- Things are not going great for Chris Davis.
- There’s now even some Jim Palmer/Davis drama that’s fit for a soap opera, writes Camden Chat.
- Milwaukee is in first in the NL Central, but they also might have a position battle brewing at short.
- Brewing, do you get it?
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