Shout Out to Whichever Team Wins the AL Central — You Know Who You Are

On July 8, the Tigers had 59 wins, while the Guardians had just 42. With one week remaining in the regular season, the Tigers have 85 wins and the Guardians have 84. A single game separates the two teams in the race for the AL Central title, a division that seemed all but sewn up for the Tigers as recently as September 13, when Detroit’s odds to win the Central sat at 98.2%, putting Cleveland’s odds at 1.8%. As of this writing, the Tigers are still favorites to win it, at 62.7%, but given that three of Detroit’s last six games are against Cleveland, the error bars on those odds are huge.

That wild swing in divisional odds happened over the course of the last week, but such a dramatic swing could only occur because in the two months leading up to it, two teams that had been heading in opposite directions both gradually rerouted and wound up on a collision course. Through April 25, both teams were winning games at roughly a .600 clip, but their fates diverged from there. By July 8, the gap in winning percentage had widened to 167 points, which translated to an additional 17 wins for the Tigers compared to the Guardians. Ever since July 8, that divide has slowly evaporated, and now the two teams own nearly identical records.

To understand how we got here, we can think of both teams as going through a bit of an identity crisis, with the Guardians rediscovering who they really are and the Tigers realizing that their presumed identity could use some retooling.

Let’s start with Detroit. Going back to the second half of last season, the Tigers have made their living tap dancing through minefields, particularly with respect to pitching. After selling at the 2024 deadline, the front office left manager A.J. Hinch with an unconventional mishmash of roster components that he had to position so as to maximize their abilities and minimize potential damage. Almost everyone kept their limbs, and Detroit put on a sensational show that many referred to as “pitching chaos.”

This year’s iteration of the Tigers pitching staff has felt less chaotic, but no less precarious. Hinch has deployed fewer openers, and the roles in the bullpen have been somewhat more stable. But the back of the rotation has been fluid, and in lieu of chaos derived from situational usage, the relief core has injected volatility into its on-field performance to keep things from feeling too comfy. An improved offense this year has meant the pitching staff could step on a few more explosives without blowing up the season, but the margins for error have narrowed as the season has worn on.

Meanwhile, Hinch has needed to manage a five-man rotation at three separate defensive positions. That may sound like an exaggeration, but third base, center field, and right field have been true timeshares. For all three positions, five or more players have logged at least 15 games over the course of the season, and no individual player has manned any of the three positions for more than 74 games.

Though the 2025 Tigers are dancing to different music and switching up the steps relative to the 2024 squad, their tap-dancing still dazzled early in the season, but more recently, the routine has looked out of rhythm. Using July 8 as the inflection point highlights what has gone wrong for Detroit since looking like one of the best teams in baseball for the first few months.

They went from ranking third league-wide in team ERA to 25th, and on offense they went from ranking sixth in the majors in wOBA to slotting in at 20th. On the pitching side, injuries have compounded underperformance. After debuting out of the bullpen last season, Jackson Jobe was off to a so-so start in the rotation before undergoing season-ending UCL surgery. Reese Olson was sidelined with a shoulder injury in July after posting a 3.15 ERA over 13 starts. Without Jobe and Olson, the Tigers have needed to rely more heavily on Keider Montero, asking him to jockey back and forth between starting and relieving, though the 24-year-old is navigating just his second year in the majors. Montero hasn’t exactly risen to the challenge. Through July 8, he posted a 3.77 ERA with a 5.18 FIP, foreshadowing the negative regression that was to come. Since then, his ERA has risen to 6.29 with a 5.24 FIP.

Ahead of the trade deadline, Detroit also supplemented its rotation by bringing in right-handers Charlie Morton and Chris Paddack. Morton was DFA’d by the Tigers on Sunday after posting a 7.09 ERA over nine starts. Paddack made six starts for Detroit before transitioning to a long relief role. As a starter, he pitched to a 5.13 ERA over 30 innings. As a reliever, he’s pitched to a 7.82 ERA over 12 2/3 innings.

Though the reinforcements’ poor performance has been the largest drag on the staff’s production, it hasn’t helped that Casey Mize started the season looking like he had leveled up with a lightly revamped arsenal, only to become incredibly homer prone over his last 10 starts. Since July 8, his HR/9 has jumped from 1.16 to 1.58. Elsewhere in the rotation, Tarik Skubal has continued executing at a Cy Young level, but he has been slightly more mortal over the last couple of months. He’s getting fewer strikeouts and less weak contact, and like Mize, his HR/9 is on the rise since July 8, growing from 0.62 to 1.23. Further, Skubal exited his September 12 start against the Marlins after experiencing discomfort in his side. He made his next scheduled start and pitched well, but perhaps the pain is an indicator of mounting fatigue. Given that the team relies heavily on Skubal to be the stopper in the rotation, any inconsistency from him is troubling.

In the bullpen, Detroit’s struggles feel particularly acute because they center two of the relievers Hinch calls upon the most in high-leverage situations. Tommy Kahnle signed with the Tigers over the offseason, and through July 8, he did exactly what he was brought in to do. He allowed a wOBA of just .248, which led to a 2.84 ERA and a 3.86 FIP. Since July 8, Kahnle has allowed a .380 wOBA with a 6.95 ERA and a 6.46 FIP. Will Vest’s season numbers tell almost the exact same story. The saves leader for the Tigers allowed a wOBA of just .221 through July 8; his ERA was 2.14, his FIP 2.34. Since then, Vest has allowed a .377 wOBA, leading to a 4.94 ERA and a 3.78 FIP.

Also concerning is the backslide from several of Detroit’s early-season contributors on offense. Gleyber Torres, who posted a 133 wRC+ through the end of June, has been roughly league average at the plate since the start of July. After several several seasons of struggling to get anything going on offense, Javier Báez looked downright hitterish through the first three months of the season; his 117 wRC+ entering July was enough to earn him his first All-Star selection since 2019. But Báez hasn’t just come back down to earth; he’s been subterranean, with a 32 wRC+ since July 1. In his age-30 season, Zach McKinstry is having the best offensive season of his career. He overcame a down month of May and carried his early-season offensive outburst into July, but in August and September his wRC+ has drooped to 88.

Of course, not everyone in the lineup has hit a wall in the second half, but even a few of the more consistent performers have slumped in September. Riley Greene, whose 130 wRC+ through the end of August ranked 12th in the AL, has only managed a 45 wRC+ so far this month. Colt Keith and Dillon Dingler have also gone cold in September, despite performing well above average for the first five months of the season.

To go from rating among the best in the league to bottom third on both sides of the ball requires more than getting out of rhythm or missing a few steps of the choreography. The Tigers misplaced their tap shoes and can’t even hear the music anymore. Without the constant racket of clanging tap shoes, maybe their minds have quieted enough for them to realize how exhausting it is to try to consistently execute difficult choreography while moving through the obstacle course of a major league season. Maybe the alternative isn’t becoming a team of glitzy Broadway dancers but a crew of breakdancers. Sure, this would still involve a fair amount of contorting on the Tigers’ part, but that in itself is not the issue; rather, it would require them to provide an appropriate surface to perform upon in order to safely spin on their heads. Maybe having one more reliable starting pitcher to reduce the risk of explosions would do the trick. Maybe instead of tapping through boom-or-bust chaos, they’d rather be the team that pulls off wild and weird moves in a more stable environment than a minefield. Either way, now is not the time to rework their act.

But Detroit’s skid is only one side of the story. And if the identity crisis plaguing the Tigers is the realization that they don’t want to be pyrotechnic tap dancers anymore, then the Guardians took a brief sabbatical from their ballet academy to take dance classes at cheer camp after being told that cheerleaders have more fun. But after awhile, Cleveland learned that while cheerleaders are good at a lot of things, dance isn’t one of them, and the Guardians, at their core, care deeply about being good at dance. Of course, by dance I actually mean pitching. Cleveland’s identity as a franchise has long been defined by its ability to develop pitchers. With a handful of notable exceptions, it hasn’t had as much success developing hitters, so the best teams in the club’s recent history have pitched and defended extremely well, and hit just enough to get by.

The 2025 Guardians are no exception; it just took them a few months to remember who they are. To demonstrate, here’s the breakdown of Cleveland’s performance, through and since July 8.

It’s true the offense was a little bit worse, and now it is a little bit better — and we should always note that José Ramírez has been fantastic all year long, reaching 30 home runs and 40 stolen bases for the second straight season, posting a 133 wRC+, and accumulating 6.0 WAR — but the more dramatic change is in the pitching performance. That’s because the increase in runs scored can be somewhat waved away by more favorable sequencing in recent months relative to early in the season, while the improved run prevention is supported by the underlying peripherals. And though BaseRuns remains convinced that the Guardians should be allowing more runs than they actually are, what BaseRuns doesn’t account for is Cleveland’s best-in-the-league ability to prevent baserunners from taking an additional base while the ball is in play (i.e. going first-to-third on a single or stretching a single into a double). Not only do the Guardians lead the league in this category, they’ve saved more than twice as many runs as the next best team. Which is to say, the upward trend in pitching outcomes isn’t just because things are suddenly breaking Cleveland’s way.

It also isn’t as simple as assuming that a few of the veteran pitchers on staff figured out the necessary adjustments to start pitching effectively again. Like the Tigers, the Guardians had to weather some turnover. Luis L. Ortiz made 16 starts for them before being placed on administrative leave pending an investigation into suspicious sports-betting activity. Ortiz was coming off a strong 2024 with the Pirates but pitched below average to start the season in Cleveland. The rotation spot vacated by Ortiz was initially filled by Joey Cantillo, then more recently by Parker Messick, and even more recently by both Cantillo and Messick, as the Guardians have moved to a six-man rotation following roster expansion in September. Both Cantillo and Messick have been an upgrade over Ortiz since taking over for him in early July.

Granted, both Cantillo and Messick are rookies and the samples are small, but both fit the mold as the type of pitcher the Guardians have been able to guide to success. Neither boasts overpowering velo or stuff, but both have a cohesive arsenal that they can use to create deception. Messick comes in as the more highly rated prospect with better stuff and stronger feel for where it’s going. His approach is primarily east/west, while Cantillo’s is more north/south, but both lefties rely on a changeup to generate swing and miss. Cantillo’s changeup takes the traditional approach, mimicking the rising action of his four-seamer, just with less velo, while Messick’s is a circle change that separates itself from his fastball with a late, downward action, in addition to the drop in velo. To confuse hitters further, Messick also throws a sinker, with movement more akin to the changeup but velo on par with his four-seamer. Both pitchers offset their fastball/changeup combos by mixing in a slider and a curveball, with Messick’s breaking more glove side and Cantillo’s breaking downward. Thus far, the formula for both pitchers has worked to generate 11 wins for the Guardians across the duo’s 17 combined starts.

Improvements among the other starters in the rotation have come in fits and starts, so it’s hard to say any of them have definitively turned a corner, with a possible asterisk on Tanner Bibee, who has strung together three fairly impressive starts in September, including a complete game (gasp!) two-hit shutout of the White Sox in which he struck out 10. He followed that up by throwing six innings and striking out eight while allowing just one run in a win against the Tigers. Over the hot stretch, Bibee has simplified his pitch mix, relying more heavily on his changeup, particularly as a putaway pitch, and upping his cutter usage while laying off his sweeper and sinker. It’s difficult to say whether something has clicked for him or whether the shift in approach was motivated purely by matchups, but he’ll likely give it a whirl at least one more time when he faces the Tigers again later this week.

In the bullpen, the stark shift in performance has stemmed primarily from Hunter Gaddis, Matt Festa, and Jakob Junis. Following the trio’s rough start to the season, Gaddis has turned things around by issuing fewer walks and inducing more weak contact, Junis has upped his strikeout rate and generated more grounders on balls in play, while Festa has nearly doubled his strikeout rate, going from 17.9% to 32.0%.

The other notable change in the bullpen is the absence of Emmanuel Clase, who in late July joined Ortiz on administrative leave while also being under investigation for violating the league’s sports-gambling rules. Through 47 1/3 innings, Clase had posted a career-worst 3.23 ERA to go along with a .272 FIP and a .285 wOBA against. Those certainly aren’t bad numbers, but Clase’s replacement at closer, Cade Smith, has pitched better than his predecessor. Since Clase was placed on leave, Smith has logged 26 innings with a 3.12 ERA, a 1.84 FIP, and a .241 wOBA against.

With the pitching mostly back on track and the Guardians feeling more like the Guardians, they rolled into Detroit last week to kick off that 35% spike in their divisional odds. The three-game series encapsulated a little bit of everything that’s been going right for the Guardians and going wrong for the Tigers.

For Cleveland:

• Steven Kwan and Gabriel Arias teamed up to throw out Andy Ibáñez trying to score from first on a double.
• The entire lineup contributed on offense, with someone different driving in the go-ahead and game-winning runs every night.
• Cantillo threw five innings of one-run ball.
• Festa and Junis bent, but didn’t break.
• Gaddis notched a save.
• Bibee went toe-to-toe with Skubal.

For Detroit:

• Mize logged 5 1/3 so-so innings and allowed seven hits, including one home run.
• Vest entered a tie game in the 10th inning and got tagged for three runs in his lone inning of work.
• Spencer Torkelson and Kerry Carpenter generated the bulk of the offense without much help from the rest of the lineup.
• Skubal pitched six innings of one-run ball, but allowed seven hits for just the fifth time all season.

After leaving Detroit, the Guardians moved on to Minnesota and took three of four from the Twins, while the Tigers got swept at home by the Braves. And that’s how we arrive at the final week of the season, with a confident Guardians team welcoming a Tigers squad that looks very little like the team that once held the best record in baseball and almost surefire odds to win the division. With three head-to-head games remaining, the Tigers have ample opportunity to flip the narrative and remind the world what they can do, but it won’t be easy. Unless the Guardians briefly forget how much they care about pitching again.

Following the series in Cleveland, the Tigers will head to Boston for three games against the Red Sox, who currently hold the second Wild Card spot with a one-game lead over the Guardians and Astros. Meanwhile, Cleveland will host the Rangers, who are five games back in the Wild Card race and are unlikely to have much to play for by Friday.

But speaking of taking on whole new identities, I appreciate the AL Central getting into the Halloween spirit a bit early and dressing up as a division with multiple teams contending for its title.