The good news is that the Cleveland Guardians, after sportswriters assumed they'd lay low this year, have a nice margin over the Twins and have a nice shot of winning the AL Central and going to the playoffs.
The bad news is that the way the Yankees and Astros are playing, the Guardians are basically guaranteed they will be seeded third and therefore will have to play during wild card week.
The AL Central, recently, has had great teams that have managed to look minuscule in comparison to other AL titans. Last year, the White Sox were a fun, formidable team who only won 93 games, compared to Houston's 95 and Tampa's 100. That lower seed eventually doomed them in the playoffs, making them have to contend with Houston in October and fail. And the trend keeps going backwards as well, with all three AL Central teams making the playoffs in 2020 losing their wild card series, with the Twins being upset by the 29-31 Astros because, again, October.
And you keep going back and see that even titans like the 2019 Bomba team out of Minneapolis, and the underrated 2018 Guardians, also seeded third. The last time an AL Central team didn't have that third seed was 2017's monster Guardians team, yes, the one with the 20 game winning streak. But even then, both them and the wild card Twins wound up losing their postseason series' anyway.
You have to go back to 2016 to find an AL Central team that didn't lose in the first round of the playoffs. And funnily enough, that came after two other years where an AL Central team made the World Series. So the Royals and Guardians were lucky and competitive for 3 years...and then essentially silence ever since.
The way we're looking at things right now, unless the Yankees skid even further in September [which isn't impossible given their Sept. schedule], the Guardians, or Twins or White Sox if they catch up, will be going in as the third seed and will have to outlast Tampa, Toronto, Seattle or, potentially another team that could sneak in.
Which means, the Cleveland Guardians, as they were in 2016, are kind of an underdog.
Now, let's be clear, I don't think they have the kind of team they did in 2016, but they do have Jose Ramirez, a pretty strong rotation, and lots of fun contact guys like Andres Gimenez, Steven Kwan and Myles Straw. In addition, Jose Ramirez is having a 25-homer/100-RBI season that is unfortunately gonna get overlooked in MVP voting because Aaron Judge exists. The team also has one of the best closers in baseball, a concise and strong bullpen, and future pieces like Nolan Jones, Tyler Freeman and Will Benson sneaking up in the background.
There is so much going on in this team, and so much that has built from Opening Day. Right at the beginning, Steven Kwan taking off right off the bat, and people went '...huh.' And they just built on that feeling. 'Huh, look at what the Guards are doing'. And now they're ahead of the AL Central in one of its tightest years in a while. I think they have a good chance of sticking the landing, but they need to really ensure that Minneapolis or Chicago doesn't leap over them at the last second.
Coming Tomorrow- You take away one excellent outfielder in St. Louis, and like 2 or 3 more grow back in his place.
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