DETROIT \u2014 In the center of the visitors\u2019 clubhouse at Comerica Park on Thursday afternoon, as some Cleveland Guardians played cards and sipped beer and others gorged on square-cut pizza slices and bobbed their heads to ear-splitting EDM, a royal blue broom leaned conspicuously against a black leather chair.<\/p>\n
After the Guardians completed a four-game sweep of the Detroit Tigers, the scene atop the American League Central standings looks familiar. The Guardians, as evidenced by the cleaning equipment on display, are reveling in it.<\/p>\n
Cleveland, with its scrappy style and war chest of pitching, sits in first place. The Guardians have won baseball\u2019s lowest-budget division three of the past four years.<\/p>\n
That spurred Tigers manager A.J. Hinch to say earlier this week, \u201cThe division runs through Cleveland. As much as we want to say otherwise, they\u2019ve done it. \u2026 That\u2019s the brutal truth. I don\u2019t want to bow down to them. I don\u2019t want to celebrate their wins, but they\u2019ve put them up there.\u201d<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t supposed to be this way when these teams broke camp in February, though that\u2019s an annual refrain at this point. The Tigers signed Framber Valdez and Justin Verlander, their payroll surging to the ninth-largest in the sport. On the heels of consecutive Wild Card berths and with a young lineup growing up, the Tigers seemed poised to finally seize control of the division. The Kansas City Royals lurked as a threat to Cleveland\u2019s supremacy. Even the Minnesota Twins, engineers of a midsummer fire sale last year, were favored over the Guardians by projection systems and betting markets that forecast Cleveland for 75-80 wins.<\/p>\n
But here in late May, once again, the Guardians rule the roost, with a functional offense to support a customarily sturdy pitching staff. To much surprise, the Chicago White Sox have emerged from a years-long slumber to climb to second place with a winning record.<\/p>\n
As for the Tigers, injuries have ravaged their roster. Ace Tarik Skubal remains on the injured list after surgery to remove a loose body from his left elbow. Verlander has made only one start because of a hip issue. Other players have greatly underperformed. They have dropped 14 of their past 16 games. They are mired in last place, 9 1\/2 games behind the Guardians.<\/p>\n
And Cleveland is asserting its dominance in a division that doesn\u2019t seem too interested in changing any narratives. How do the Guardians \u2014 who own the league\u2019s paltriest payroll, who employ one of the league\u2019s youngest rosters and who sit comfortably atop a division as fierce as a kitten \u2014 keep getting away with it?<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re here to win,\u201d manager Stephen Vogt said. \u201cWe don\u2019t rebuild here. We don\u2019t take a step back. \u2026 And when Jos\u00e9 Ram\u00edrez is out there, he wants to win a World Series more than anybody on the planet, so the expectation is you\u2019re coming here to help us win games. It\u2019s not, \u2018Hey, come get your feet wet and maybe in a couple years, we\u2019ll be pretty good.\u2019 We expect to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Tigers once expected to win, too. They throttled to life two years ago when they staged a remarkable 31-13 finish, overcoming 0.2 percent odds to make the playoffs, then taking the Guardians to Game 5 in a tense AL Division Series.<\/p>\n
A year ago, the Tigers were the AL\u2019s best team in the first half, then staged a meltdown of epic proportions. Detroit\u2019s collapse coincided with a miraculous Guardians run, overcoming a 15 1\/2-game deficit to win the division. The Tigers kept a white-knuckle grasp on a wild-card spot, and of course, the two teams met again in the playoffs. This time, the Tigers advanced in the best-of-three series.<\/p>\n
Now, in an American League that has just five teams above .500, it is too early to make any grand conclusions. Weird things seem to happen in the AL Central at a disproportionate rate anyway.<\/p>\n
But another Tigers-Guardians showdown in October might require another dose of the improbable. After their miserable series against the Guardians, the Tigers have fallen to 23rd in OPS. They still have 13 players on the injured list. Hinch is facing more heat than at any other point in his Tigers tenure.<\/p>\n