Might the Detroit Tigers Be the Minnesota Twins' Biggest Competition in the American League Central?

[Matthew Taylor]

The Minnesota Twins are the clear favorites in the American League Central right now. Might the Detroit Tigers be the biggest threat for the division crown?

Image courtesy of © Lon Horwedel-USA TODAY Sports

Coming into the 2023 season, the American League Central was a clear two-team race between the Minnesota Twins and the Cleveland Guardians. In their preseason odds, Fangraphs had the Twins as the division favorites with a 38.7% chance of winning the division with the Guardians as a close second with a 33.9% chance, and the Chicago White Sox as the third most likely. 

We’re more than one quarter of the way through the season and the landscape of the American League Central has changed. While the Minnesota Twins have played about how well everyone projected they would (an 84-win pace) the rest of the division has been turned on its head.

First of all, the Chicago White Sox have completely taken themselves out of the playoff picture. The White Sox are 11 games below .500, and that’s after a weekend sweep of the lowly Kansas City Royals. 

Additionally, the presumed division-favorite Cleveland Guardians have significantly underperformed. After Monday's games, the Cleveland Guardians stand at 21-26 with a -31 run differential and being freshly swept by the New York Mets. While the Guardians have suffered mostly because of their bats (they own a league-worst wRC+ of 77), they only have a league-average starting rotation and their all-world closer Emmanuel Clase leads the league in blown saves.

Enter the Detroit Tigers.

Coming out of the weekend, the second place team in the American League Central is the team that was originally projected to have the worst record in the division. The Detroit Tigers currently lead the Guardians by a game in the Central, and are just two and a half games back of the Minnesota Twins for the division lead.

Similar to the Guardians, the Detroit Tigers have been terrible at the plate ranking just above Cleveland with a wRC+ of 82. On the pitching side, though, the Tigers have made real strides this year, ranking 12th in baseball in wOBA after finishing 26th in the same metric in 2022. A big reason for that has been Eduardo Rodriguez, who owns a 2.06 ERA, fourth best in the American League. Additionally, the return of the rising-star pitchers, Tarik Skubal and Matt Manning, appear to be on the horizon.

What the Tigers really need in order to solidify themselves as the main competitor to the Minnesota Twins in the American League Central is for their star batting prospects, Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene, to start meeting the lofty expectations that were set out for them and make the Detroit lineup a real threat.

One area that the Detroit Tigers have an advantage over the Cleveland Guardians is in their potential for making mid-season additions. The Cleveland Guardians have repeatedly shown that they are not willing to spend money, and not likely to make much noise at the trade deadline. The Detroit Tigers, however, have shown that when they have a team with the potential to compete, they will make the necessary moves to put themselves in a position to do just that.

The Twins don’t have much of a threat at all when it comes to the competition in the American League Central, but it will be interesting to see whether it’s the Cleveland Guardians who hit their stride and become the threat that we all expected them to be, or if it’s the Detroit Tigers who turn out to be the main competitor to the Minnesota Twins in 2023.

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[mikelink45]

I am not ready to underestimate the Guardians.  I believe Tito is till their manager. 

[weitz41]

For me the Guardian's haven't underperformed, it's more like they returned to the medium. IMO they clearly overperformed last season. About 1/2 the team did.

As for the Tigers they are IMO much closer to what most expected last season. A .500 team +/- 5 games. Not much went right for them last season. Kinda sounds like the Twins in the second 1/2 of last year.

The Sox are a ball of yawn. If it holds together, they'll be there at the end. If one string gets pulled a little too hard, it will turn into a rat's nest that no one can unravel.

The Royals pitching has them in freefall. Offence isn't much better but really young and will improve as the season goes on.

Our Twins JUST have to be an average offence and have some reasonable health. To win the division. They are the only team that did ANYTHING to get much better this offseason.

The Tigers may end up being the team with the best chance to chase the Twins down. With most of their prime pitching is on the shelf that makes it seem unlikely to me, but as long as we continue to lose game our starters give us every chance to win, they can't be counted out.

[D.C Twins]

I would use the word 'competition' very loosely when describing the American League Central..... 

[Rik19753]

No, they are not.

The Guardians' -31 point differential may be bad, but the Tigers' -48 differential is worse. They are clearly over-performing. Greene and Torkelson can turn into stars and they still wouldn't have an average lineup. They have 3 players with more than 50 PA that have a OPS higher than .700 and none have a OPS above .800. The Twins have 9 players with a .700+ OPS and 4 with a .800 OPS.

[Dman]

The central is wide open if you ask me.  The White Sox are only 5.5 games out of first place and if their offense does start to show up they have the pitching to compete.  Cleveland is only 3.5 back and again if the offense does get going could be a force. Detroit is only 2.5 games back but I tend to agree with others that it feels like they have over performed to this point but sometimes the game goes like that and they could be lucky this year the way they were unlucky last year.  The only team completely out of it at this point is KC.

The Twins just keep finding ways to almost win but lose instead.  Too many players not ready to mentally perform IMO.  The Twins have equal if not better talent and better all round depth than the other teams in the central but they seem determined to bumble away any advantages they might have by not executing in critical situations.

This division is there for any team to lose or win. Let the race to the top or bottom begin. Two months in and is basically a free for all.

[KirbyDome89]

KC is a dumpster fire. Good luck Royals fan(s) you've got a long haul ahead. 

I honestly don't understand why people continue to count the Sox in. They're more inconsistent than our beloved Twins, and they're absolutely atrocious defensively. They've proven that they can't put it together. 

I didn't think Cleveland was as good as their record said last year, Idk if they're as bad as their record indicates this year, but somebody needs to explain where their offense is going to come from. Seriously, who in that lineup is even a semi lock to start picking it up? I can't imagine being a Cleveland fan, they're sitting bottom five in payroll in the most winnable division in baseball, and they're 1 or 2 bats away from at minimum pushing for 1st place. If there was ever an argument for a payroll floor/ceiling....

If Detroit totally buys into a youth movement, and those guys hit or exceed expectations, maybe we're talking about a race come late July. What are the odds that happens? They're as bad offensively as Cleveland right now. 

The author is right, this is the Twins division to win/lose. Who knows whether that'll happen, but this division is straight up terrible, and anything less than an AL Central crown would be catastrophic. 

[Rik19753]

25 minutes ago, KirbyDome89 said:

I didn't think Cleveland was as good as their record said last year, Idk if they're as bad as their record indicates this year, but somebody needs to explain where their offense is going to come from. Seriously, who in that lineup is even a semi lock to start picking it up? I can't imagine being a Cleveland fan, they're sitting bottom five in payroll in the most winnable division in baseball, and they're 1 or 2 bats away from at minimum pushing for 1st place. If there was ever an argument for a payroll floor/ceiling....

It's ironic that this was probably the only offseason that Guardians fans weren't complaining about not making any big additions to their offense, yet this year their offense is worse than ever. It's just so hard for players who had good rookie seasons to continue that in their sophomore year, as evidenced by Julio Rodriguez, Miranda, and all of the young players on the Guardians.

[SwainZag]

If you think the Twins offense is bad, take a look at what the Tigers are working with.

[rwilfong86]

The Twins could win this division and finish under .500.  That will really make people mad.

[dxpavelka]

The Twins biggest competition in this division is the Twins.  Starting pitching, hitting and bullpen all need to work in harmony.  They don't.  End of story.

[IndianaTwin]

Regretfully, I don't think Chicago can be considered out of it, being down only 5.5. Much of their early season struggles were when Tim Anderson was on the shelf, and Liam Hendricks is likely to return in the next week or so. 

I agree with Dxpavelka in that the Twins biggest opponent is themselves. They are in a scuffling spot with losses in five of their last six, but they have the ability to run off a couple of strings with five out of six wins as well. 

[Major League Ready]

I really don't care about winning the division if that is accomplished with a 500 record.  Winning the division will be a hollow victory if we don't have some young players step up an establish themselves as the future.  Kirilloff and Varland have been bright spots.  This team really needs Royce Lewis to succeed.  Larnach or Wallner or both need to step up.  

 

 

[dogsday]

Or maybe the Tigers are the Guardians biggest competitor?

[Fire Dan Gladden]

Now there is an article title nobody expected to see this year...

[Doctor Wu]

Rodriguez has been great as a starter for the Tigers this year, and they have a few interesting pieces, but I don't think they have the depth or talent that the Twins have. But hey, as we are seeing, injuries and lackluster performances can turn things around. Our old buddy Akil Baddoo is showing signs of life since he got called up. His batting average is slowly rising, but he's drawing lots of walks and increasing his OBP too.  Okay, he's not going to challenge for an All-Star spot this year, but he's showing signs of being a solid player. 

[Nine of twelve]

On 5/24/2023 at 5:39 AM, rwilfong86 said:

The Twins could win this division and finish under .500.  That will really make people mad.

In a perverse way part of me hopes that happens. It would be fun to see brains exploding among the baseball purists.

[Nine of twelve]

On 5/24/2023 at 7:01 AM, dxpavelka said:

The Twins biggest competition in this division is the Twins.

Exactly. We have been underperforming yet we lead the division by 2.5 games. If our players play up to their abilities 90 wins is still not an unreasonable expectation. The division is ours for the taking

[dxpavelka]

1 minute ago, Nine of twelve said:

Exactly. We have been underperforming yet we lead the division by 2.5 games. If our players play up to their abilities 90 wins is still not an unreasonable expectation. The division is ours for the taking

85 wins and a deep post-season run is in play as well.

[stringer bell]

The two best teams in the Central the past two weeks are playing each other in Detroit. I won't rule out the White Sox either. Their defense, with Moncada at third and Anderson at short isn't bad. Their starting pitching is coming around and they have several good offensive players. 

Detroit has been one of the most efficient defensive teams this year. They have a lot of good arms and a suspect offense, to be sure. If they can find guys to increase the offensive output, they might contend, but I think too many are a year away and they have had too many pitching injuries.