How Horrible is the AL Central?

Before the season if you were asked to come up with what teams you would expect to be good, the AL Central was the only league that you could come up with only one response, the Tigers and that's it (most people would have expected before the season that one of the Giants, Rockies or Dodgers were going to be good this year to go along with the Diamondbacks in the NL West.)  And even worse than that I'm sure a consensus of people would have agreed that the other teams in the division could be simply written off as bad teams.  This is due to happen in any sport, there is always going to be one division that is going to sputter and only produce one good team, if they can even manage one (looking at you 2010 NFC West) so this isn't really anything new to anybody.  But the other day I was watching a Red Sox game and the announcers were talking about the easy schedule they had ahead after their difficult start to the season, most of those teams being from the AL Central, the Twins, White Sox, Royals etc.  A seemingly innocent comment that anybody would not think twice about that caused me to chuckle a little seeing that at the time of that comment, the Chicago White Sox were in a tie with the Detroit Tigers for the lead in the Central, and division leaders, even this early in the season, don't typically lend themselves to being pushovers.  So lets take a look to examine if the AL Central is as bad as everybody makes it out to be.

Accurate standings?  Screw that I'm ad-libbing

Detroit Tigers

Yes, the Tigers are good.  Sure Victor Martinez is currently without knees, Doug Fister can't throw a ball at the moment and their 5 hitter is too busy yelling anti-Semitic insults at nobody in particular, but that really doesn't change the fact they are possibly the best team in the world.  Justin Verlander is lights out as always, Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder will eventually hit a streak that will make Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier's start to the season look like an off week.  As soon as Scherzer and Porcello can remember that their job is to get people out, they will most likely run away with the division as everyone expects them to.  On a lighter note, I hope Doug Fister's return won't change Drew Smyly's place in the rotation as the young man has pitched quite well in 3 starts and I would hate to see one awesome name get kicked out by another awesome name.   

They need to work on their skipping.

Chicago White Sox

I'm admittedly going by no particular order with these teams so maybe they are which ones are the most entertaining to me?  Speaking of entertaining, how about Philip Humber throwing a perfect game the other day and possibly getting a bizarro Jim Joyce call to end it out?  He was pitching pretty well on the season too until he got smacked around by the suddenly hot bats of Boston yesterday.  That's not saying he is the only pitcher who has seen success for them this year, one of my favorite pitchers a few years back, Jake Peavy, has found his groove again and while I'm not saying he will be a Cy Young candidate ever again, it sure is nice to see him finding success.  Throw in some Chris Sale success and a dash of Gavin Floyd's 4 runs of support in his 4 decent starts they have some pitching to go forward.  Unfortunately their offense won't be getting better as the entire squad has been known to let fans down with the exception of Paul Konerko.  They have enjoyed some moderate success to this point in the season but unless that pitching can really kick it into overdrive for a whole season, they are due to fail eventually.

No quip here, it's just a cool picture.

Cleveland Indians

I'm going to say it, the Indians are not a bad team and I don't think their 9-6 start is a fluke.  I think they will finish the season between 3 and 5 games above .500 and that would be a season to be proud of for them going forward.  Between the names Carlos Santana, Shin-Soo Choo, Jason Kipnis and Asdrubal Cabrera they have some quality offensive talent under the age of 30, and for some reason I think Michael Brantley is better than his numbers make him seem, but I may be very wrong on that point.  Casey Kotchman can play first base defensively, probably putting him just worse than Daric Barton on my list of starting first basemen (hint: it's pretty low on that list) and Travis Hafner probably still has some pop left in his bat, albeit he would be lucky to hit half the homers he put up in his confusingly good 2006 season.  But ultimately it has been their pitching that has failed them to this point with a staff ERA of 4.56 which is not very good.  Their best starter so far is Derek Lowe who they received as a handout from the Braves who wanted no part of that guy anymore, hopefully Ubaldo Jiminez or Justin Masterson can take that crown from him because if things stay like that it will be a bumpy ride.  The Indians are one big trade away from being able to dream about contending for the second Wild Card spot, but not much more than that being the 8th or 9th best team in the AL.

See Grady, you set up for the fly to not get on the DL again.

Kansas City Royals

The Royals have been faring worse than they have been playing, according to baseball-reference.com they are 3 games worse than their Pythagorean record says they should be.  They have lost all 5 of the 1 run games they have been in.  Their offense is basically comprised of young talent that is going to be huge one day (Eric Hosmer, Mike Moustakas), solid players who can't live up to their talent level (Alex Gordon, Jeff Francouer) and Billy Butler.  Their rotation is also really young with upside except for talented vocalist Bruce Chen (more singing here and here) who has been pitching very well, which I like because he seems like a cool guy.  They seem like a team that would have a lot of fun on the field and would be very fun to watch during a winning season, maybe next year.

They looked so happy!

Minnesota Twins

How can you possibly take a team that has two former MVPs at ages 31 and 29 and call them bad?  Well, two years of injury troubles could help that happen.  Joe Mauer is among my favorite players in the game right now and Justin Morneau is both obscenely talented and Canadian so I like him too.  I really hope they can  both return to form this year, but two good players can't make a team good.  I did praise Josh Willingham in a past article, but in case you didn't pick up on it, the entire piece was written sarcastically.  I really can't find anything else to say about this team other than the fact that they are simply a disappointment.  As much as I would like to see Mauer and Morneau on top of the AL Central, Ron Gardenhire would have to be considered the best manager of all time (see video below) to get this team to the playoffs.  So yes, the Twins are that horrible.

On the whole I think that the AL Central isn't as bad as people make it out to be.  They have some very good players, some good teams, one great team and a good amount of upside for the future.  Having said that, it still is the worse division in the game.  Thanks for reading if you did and feel free to send some comments on anything you would like to read about, otherwise I'm going to keep improvising like this.