If you haven't been paying attention, there is still one race that has not yet been wrapped up: the AL Central division race. Not only has it not been wrapped up, but Detroit and Minnesota have identical 85-76 records with one game left in the regular season.
This scenario is being spun as a total collapse by Detroit, and I was all ready to pile on to the Tigers. The I took a look at the numbers, and I was surprised at what I found. Here are Detroit's and Minnesota's record by month, with how many games Detroit was ahead of Minnesota in the standings at the end of the month in parenthesis:
April: 11-10 11-11 (+0.5)
May: 17-11 14-16 (+4.5)
June: 15-13 15-12 (+4.0)
July: 10-14 12-12 (+2.0)
August: 16-13 14-14 (+3.5)
Sept/Oct: 16-15 19-11 (0)
So, in actuality, Detroit has never been that far ahead of Minnesota. Sure they may have jumped more than 5 games ahead at a point in the season, but they never were able to pull away from Minnesota. So why is everyone piling on the Tigers? Here are their records over the last 9 games:
Detroit: 3-6
Minnesota: 6-3
So over the first 22 games of September, Minnesotsa made up 0.5 games of a 3.5 game defecit. Over the last 9 games, they've made up 3 games. So, clearly it looks like Detroit has choked, right? Let's look at who they've actually played.
They played 4 games against each other, and split those games. That means Detroit has gone 1-4 against the White Sox and Minnesota has gone 4-1 against the Royals. Now, Chicago is practically a .500 team (as of this post, they are 79-82), while the Royals are just 2 games out of the AL cellar.
So is this really a total choke on the part of the Tigers? I'm going to say no. It looks bad because Detroit has been on top of the division for so long. In fact, the Tigers will make history if they lose the division in becoming the first team to lead their division since May 10, only to lose their lead in the last week of the season. But while you'd expect Detroit to do better than 1-4 against a team with nothing to play for, if you're going to take issue with the Tigers, you should look back earlier in the season where they didn't pull away from Minnesota, not to these last 10 games of the season.
The real winners in all of this? The New York Yankees. The only thing that scared the Yankees for their first round matchup was the prospect of facing Tigers starter Justin Verlander in games 1 and 4 of the series. Now, because Detorit needs tomorrow's game, they have to put Verlander out there tomorrow, which means he won't pitch until Friday in the playoffs, which would be game 2. Let's be real, these 2 teams are looking at about 86 wins, while the Yankees have 102 and have their starters set up exactly how they want them.
Anyway, the Tigers send Verlander to the mound around 1 PM tomorrow, while the Twins send epic Yankee failure Carl Pavano to try and push themselves to a W around 2 PM.
*Technically this isn't true, as if Colorado beats LA tonight and tomorrow, the Rockies will steal the division from the Dodgers. But since both of these teams are in the playoffs already anyway, it doesn't really count.
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