The AL Central has been the most chaotic division race in baseball, and it just flipped again.
The Cleveland Guardians have surged to a half-game lead at 78-75. The Chicago White Sox sit at 77-75. Nobody else is close: Detroit is 5.5 back, Minnesota 6.5, Kansas City already eliminated at 10.5 games out.
Two teams barely over .500 are going to send one of them to October and the other one home.
The Projections Disagree With The Standings
This is the fascinating part. Cleveland holds the lead, but SportsLine gives the White Sox a 55.4 percent chance to win the division against Cleveland’s 44.2 percent. Chicago’s overall postseason odds sit at 77.8 percent to Cleveland’s 70.2 percent.
The models are looking at remaining schedule and run differential and concluding the Guardians are ahead of where they should be. Cleveland has the momentum. Chicago has the underlying numbers.
The Loser Is Not Necessarily Out
That is what makes this race different from a normal division fight. The White Sox currently hold the final American League wild-card spot, which means losing the Central does not end their season.
It does put them in serious traffic. Texas sits one game back in the wild-card chase, Toronto 1.5, Baltimore 2.5. The Rangers are riding a winning streak into a first-place tie with Houston at 76-76 in the AL West, and whichever of those two loses the division lands in the same wild-card scrum.
CBS Sports called the final AL wild-card spot the most muddled race in baseball, and that is not hyperbole. Six teams are within 6.5 games of it.
Why Cleveland Has The Edge
The Guardians have done this before. This is a franchise that has repeatedly outperformed its payroll and its projections by developing pitching and playing clean baseball in September.
Chicago’s rise has been the better story, and the White Sox have been forced to improvise, using Luis Castillo out of the bullpen and leaning on rookie starters like David Sandlin. That is not the profile of a team built to survive a two-week sprint.
The Prediction
Guardians win the division. White Sox take the final wild card and get eliminated by a bye team in the first round.
Whoever comes out of this is going to face the Rays or the Yankees with a rotation held together by September call-ups. Neither team is winning a pennant. Both of them are going to be enormously fun to watch for the next two weeks, and in a season where the Dodgers and Brewers have been inevitable, that counts for something.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.