Elegy for 2021: Recapping the AL Central, Team by Team

After a one-year hiatus due to the oddity and non-celebratory feeling of a season truncated by a raging pandemic, we’re bringing back the Elegy series in a streamlined format for a 2021 wrapup. Think of this as a quick winter preview for each team, discussing the questions that faced each team ahead of the year, how they were answered, and what’s next. Do you like or hate the new format? Let me know in the comments below!

Chicago White Sox (93–69)

The Big Question
Did the White Sox miss out by not acquiring another bat? I wouldn’t say they had a lackadaisical offseason, considering they made two massive upgrades to their pitching staff in Lance Lynn and Liam Hendriks. But they didn’t show a similar vigor in adding to the offense. Chicago didn’t struggle to score in 2020, finishing second in the AL in runs scored, but right field and designated hitter were notorious weak spots. And while there was talk about swiping Nelson Cruz out from under the Twins’ noses, the White Sox settled for signing wayward son Adam Eaton to a one-year deal and counting on top prospect Andrew Vaughn to be ready for the majors. Both were considerable risks: Eaton was coming off the worst season of his career, and Vaughn had yet to play above A-ball, where a lot of his value came from walks.

How It Went
That part of the plan didn’t quite work out. Vaughn did a respectable job picking up the outfield on the fly and even briefly cosplayed as a second baseman and a third baseman. But while he showed a solid eye at the plate, as in A-ball, not a lot of power came out of it; he struggled to a .613 OPS in the second half, and righties dominated him with breaking stuff all season. In the end, Vaughn would have been better served at Triple-A, which already would have been a big leap; the White Sox didn’t get anything from him they couldn’t have gotten from any other random fourth outfielder on a one-year deal. Eaton, meanwhile, was terrible, saw his playing time diminish, and was released midseason.

In the end, though, it didn’t actually matter! Neither Cleveland nor Minnesota proved up to the task of contention, and the White Sox were blessed with Yermín Mercedes having the best two months of his life in April and May, giving the team a surprise reinforcement at a time when the division was still in doubt. Even injuries to Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert couldn’t completely stop the team in its tracks. By the time Chicago acquired Craig Kimbrel at the deadline, the AL Central race was long over for all intents and purposes.

What’s Next?
Carlos Rodón is a free agent, but with Lynn extended for two years and Lucas Giolito, and Dylan Cease still in the fold, the White Sox could roll with Michael Kopech and Dallas Keuchel to round out the starting five and expend resources elsewhere. The fundamental problem in right field didn’t go away, where they ended up getting a .227/.297/.374 line out of the position overall. They might be content to use Vaughn here next year, but I’d rather they be more ambitious and let him get time in Triple-A to learn how to leverage his pitch recognition abilities into professional power and escape the Ben Grieve Trap.

Player Projection Spotlight: Luis Robert
Robert’s solid projection is hardly surprising to, well, anybody at this point, but after the disappointingly quick exit for Chicago, I felt a little fan service is in order. While the raw WAR isn’t quite as exciting as the qualitative stats, remember that ZiPS is being conservative given that he’s a young player coming off a major injury. This type of conservatism works out more often than you would think; players suffering significant injuries have considerable injury risks that tend to abate only over time. Fernando Tatis Jr. projections were kind of in the same bucket. Of the top players Robert is compared to, only Roberto Kelly truly had a disappointing career, but I think Robert has more raw talent to work with.

Cleveland Soon-to-be-Guardians (80–82)

The Big Question
Was there a life after their stars? Cleveland played perfectly solid .583 ball in 2020 but traded Francisco Lindor and Carlos Carrasco in the offseason for two players who were more sort-of-win-now types, Amed Rosario and Andrés Giménez. The AL Central didn’t look to be the strongest division by any stretch of the imagination, leaving the hope that the two remaining stars, José Ramírez and Shane Bieber, could lift a group of average-ish talent elsewhere to somewhere around 90 wins and a division crown. ZiPS wasn’t particularly bullish on this plan, rather presciently projecting a 79–83 season (just one win off reality) and a 1-in-10 shot at making the playoffs, mostly as the second wild card.

How It Went
Ramírez’s huge 2020 comeback season was no fluke, and he was again a legitimate contender for the AL MVP award. (OK, a legitimate contender for second place in the AL MVP race because Shohei Ohtani exists.) Bieber did his part as well before shoulder pain shut him down for three months. Cleveland saw something in Cal Quantrill that the Padres never did, and when given a shot at starting in early summer, he went with it, posting a 2.27 ERA and a still-respectable 4.15 FIP in 16 outings from July onward. Unfortunately, once you got past Franmil Reyes, the offense was notably unimpressive, and the bullpen was extremely weak most times you weren’t facing Emmanuel Clase. Cleveland did just enough to hang on to second place, albeit miles behind Chicago (and barely ahead of Detroit).

What’s Next?
With Ramírez, Cleveland has fallen into the same trap that the Royals did with Whit Merrifield: a popular star who is a big part of the franchise, but one who is likely far more valuable for what he can bring back in a trade than what he will actually do for the team. If the franchise wanted to build around him, that’s one thing, but there was again little indication of wanting to do more than tinker around the edges rather than use him as a foundation.

Cleveland is now down to only two more years of Ramírez, and Bieber is already halfway through his team-controlled years. The outfield last finished in the top half of MLB in wRC+ all the way back in 2016 and seems to be built simply based on whoever already happens to be in training camp. This team isn’t equipped to win now, and while the farm system is a good one with intriguing youngsters like George Valera and Nolan Jones who are getting closer to the majors, it’s always risky to bank on prospects and nothing more. Cleveland needs to pick a direction beyond simply existing.

Player Projection Spotlight: Cal Quantrill
Quantrill interests me, because if Cleveland is going to see long-term success, they’re going to need to find a lot more Quantrills. ZiPS isn’t buying the sub-three ERA, but it does see him being a dependable mid-rotation starter. If his changeup can develop into a real swing-and-miss pitch, he can be a lot more. The slider, which really borders on the edge of being a cutter, is an effective pitch, but it’s not a real punchout pitch.

Detroit Tigers (77-85)

The Big Question
The rebuilding Tigers possess a lot of fascinating young starting pitching. In our preseason Top 100 prospects, three of the top 32 came from Detroit: Matt Manning, Tarik Skubal, and Casey Mize. That top trio wasn’t just highly regarded, but also close to the majors, having already survived the low minors gauntlet. ZiPS, meanwhile, liked Joey Wentz and Alex Faedo to be useful back-of-the-rotation starters, giving the team impressive young depth here. Coupled with holdovers Spencer Turnbull and Matthew Boyd, Detroit looked to have figured out the pitching side of the equation.

Scoring runs was another story. Struggling to develop offensive talent for a shocking number of years, Detroit did a lot to remedy the situation by adding Spencer Torkelson and Riley Greene to the farm system in back-to-back drafts. But could the Tigers find enough hitting to build around these two when they eventually got to the majors? And, more importantly, could they find runs from players who would still likely be on the roster in a year or two?

How It Went
Nobody will confuse the 2021 Tigers with the Astros, but with one notable exception, they did get some solid performances from hitters that are part of the team’s future. Akil Baddoo didn’t keep up his early-season pace and probably should be used sparingly against lefties, but he did establish himself as a real talent if deployed correctly and was more than credible in center field. Jeimer Candelario solidified his 2020 gains even if he didn’t quite match that output and led the league in doubles. Jake Rogers showed real offensive improvement in a season eventually cut short by Tommy John surgery. The big disappointment was that Willi Castro didn’t build on his surprising success in 2020.

The pitching was about as expected, and with the offense improving, the Tigers roared back from a tough April, going 69–66 from May through the end of the year. For a team projected at 70 wins, that’s a solid campaign and a real sea change from losing 114 games the last time Detroit played a full season. Torkelson and Greene both terrorized minor league pitchers, so another offensive improvement is imminent.

What’s Next?
The big questions for the Tigers now are when do they spend money, and how much? In an offseason likely to be marred by CBA negotiations, there will be potential for an aggressive team to take advantage of the expected conservatism of other franchises, and with Torkelson and Greene possibly arriving in ’22, the Tigers may just be some depth, a free-agent hitter, and a reliever or two away from being an 85-win team with upside. The foundation for a top team does exist now.

That said, there are still problems to be worked out. From a baseball standpoint, the most notable one may be the franchise player from Detroit’s salad days, Miguel Cabrera. The Angels bungled Albert Pujols‘ decline years, content to start seasons with one of the worst starters in baseball written into the middle of the lineup in magic marker. The Tigers would be smart to learn from their mistake.

What’s also still unclear is just how much the Tigers are willing to spend in free agency. Mike Ilitch invested a lot of dough into the roster as an octogenarian who wanted to get a World Series trophy in the time he had. Christopher Ilitch has already hinted that the Tigers will be active, but it remains to be seen just how much. Could this team go after Carlos Correa? Corey Seager? Robbie Ray or Kevin Gausman? If the wallet is opened, the White Sox may be worrying about the Old English D more than they expected.

Player Projection Spotlight: Akil Baddoo
I expected ZiPS to be more skeptical about Baddoo than it is. Rather than project him to regress, it’s expecting him to consolidate his gains, something which would be good news for the Tigers. A shocking number of really excellent players are high on his comp list at a similar age, such as Bernie Williams, Grady Sizemore, and Willie Davis. That’s probably his upside, but even a lesser outcome is a pretty nice return on investment on a Rule 5 player.

Kansas City Royals (74–88)

The Big Question
Given the cynical nature of the offseason and coming off a year where many organizations didn’t treat their lowest-paid players or workers terribly well, Kansas City was a breath of fresh air. Not only did the franchise look after its personnel during the height of the pandemic, but it also gave more than lip service to the product on the field, signing Mike Minor, Carlos Santana, and Michael A. Taylor, acquiring Andrew Benintendi, and taking fliers on old Royals like Wade Davis, Jarrod Dyson, and Ervin Santana. Was that enough to drift toward contention in the AL Central? ZiPS was skeptical, predicting a 77–85 record, but projections have a large enough error range that a playoff-relevant Royals team wasn’t implausible. Plus, team president Dayton Moore would likely add players if the team was halfway decent midseason, and fate enjoys finding reasons to get Royals fans angry with me on Twitter.

How It Went
For about a month, it looked like things were working out, with a May Day high-water mark of 16–9 and only one other AL Central team above the .500 mark. There were warning signs, however: the offense was still lagging, ranking 24th in wRC+ through the end of April, and the team was largely hanging onto first thanks to an interesting but probably overachieving rotation. Jakob Junis, Brady Singer, and Danny Duffy basically had to spend a month pitching like Cy Young contenders to keep Kansas City above the waterline.

Things fell apart quickly for the Royals in May. An 11-game losing streak knocked them back to third, and they only barely got above .500 again in June before the pitching collapsed, resulting in an 8–29 run that served as the coup de grâce. The pitching largely righted itself in the season’s closing chapters, but it was far too little, far too late as the team had little offense outside of Salvador Perez crushing homer after homer, practically becoming a human infomercial for Tommy John surgery.

What’s Next?
The problem with the Royals’ approach going into 2021 was that if it didn’t actually work out, they might find themselves in no better situation for 2022. The good news is that while the season itself didn’t have much good fortune, they got some very positive developments on the farm, with Bobby Witt Jr. looking like a monster and Nick Pratto and MJ Melendez likely shooting up prospect lists (they certainly did in ZiPS!).

Some of the team’s offensive problems may take care of themselves in this regard, but the challenge ahead is in building a lineup around these players beyond just filling out the card with familiar names. Merrifield is still valuable when playing his natural position of second base, but Hunter Dozier’s 2019 breakout has stalled, Jorge Soler is gone, and neither Benintendi or Ryan O’Hearn look to be real long-term solutions. If Kansas City is rarely going to trade players near the top of their game, it will have to invest more in free agency and the top-tier variety of player rather than an endless parade of one-year stopgaps.

Player Projection Spotlight: Bobby Witt Jr.
The Royals teased starting Witt in the majors after a hot spring; not only did he not start with the Royals, but he also didn’t finish with the parent club either. ZiPS translates his minor league line at around an .800 OPS for the season — a pretty sweet result for a player who had yet to play above Rookie ball. It would have been fun to see him, but I think Kansas City handled him better than the White Sox did Vaughn. Now, if he doesn’t start 2022 with the team, I’m calling shenanigans.

Minnesota Twins (73–89)

The Big Question
Would 2021 be the year that both Byron Buxton and Miguel Sanó finally stayed healthy? That question has been asked since 2015, invariably with some version of “no” in response. But if they managed, it could have been the topper for a team that had been frustrated by playoff incompetence but still possessed a solid core. The time-impervious Cruz was back; they’d hopefully get a full year of Josh Donaldson; and a rotation of Kenta Maeda, José Berríos, Michael Pineda, J.A. Happ, and others looked more than adequate. Most of the protagonists from 2019’s 101-win finish and 2020’s AL Central title were returning for another sequel. And after Jiménez went down in late March, ZiPS pegged the Twins as the division’s best team at 91 wins.

How It Went
Oof.

Minnesota’s 2021 season was basically a physical manifestation of the sound you’d make immediately after trying to start a fistfight with Stipe Miocic. Buxton played his best baseball ever but missed significant time, first with a hip injury, then with a broken hand. He needed just 61 games to hit 19 homers, but those injuries may be the only reason he’s currently on Minnesota’s roster rather than participating in postseason baseball with the Twins or someone else. Sanó got off to a miserable start, literally going five-for-April, but came back from a hamstring injury to hit .235/.312/.489 the rest of the way, a more typical line from him.

Nothing much else worked for the Twins. Matt Shoemaker and Randy Dobnak were disasters, the bullpen was shallow, and except for Berríos, the team’s good starting pitchers missed time due to injury. Alex Kirilloff, a breakout hitter preseason pick, suffered through pre-existing wrist problems that eventually required surgery. Trevor Larnach put up an OPS in the mid-.800s in his first month in the majors but struggled to hit anything that wasn’t a fastball, something pitchers discovered very quickly.

What’s Next?
Unfortunately for the Twins, they didn’t do a lot either to help them retool for one more run in 2022 or learn things that would help them excel later. They got good value for Berríos in Austin Martin and Simeon Woods Richardson from Toronto and two live arms from Tampa Bay for a Cruz rental, but the former would be extremely helpful to have around if they’re going for the quick retool route. And if they’re going for a long rebuild, it’s hard to justify hanging onto players like Donaldson and Maeda, who will miss most if not all of next year after blowing out his elbow.

The real danger is if the Twins try to take a middle road, not trading any veterans but eschewing any big payroll additions and hoping for a bounceback to do the heavy lifting. The White Sox have a deeper roster, and I think the Tigers will too after 2022; the Twins will have to commit fully to one direction or another. And while the Royals are happy to float in that space between rebuilding and top-tier contention, they managed to win a World Series; if not for that, they’d be only known as the team with the third-fewest wins in baseball since hiring Moore.

Player Projection Spotlight: Joe Ryan
Ryan may be the least sexy name of the players I’m providing an early projection for, but I think he’s significant because he’s one of the players the Twins will likely need whether they go the retool or the rebuild route. He’s on the old side for a prospect, but he’s extraordinarily polished for a young pitcher without a whole lot of professional experience, and the Twins already trusted him enough to throw him into the rotation at the end of the season. Some added velocity would be nice, but Minnesota tends to be patient about this type of pitcher. It’s certainly a massive improvement from last year’s ZiPS projection for Ryan, which featured an ERA approaching six!

Next up: the NL Central!