Even peripheral attention is finite, and you would have been forgiven, on or about the morning of July 9, for tucking away the AL Central in your mental "pay no mind" file. On that date, the Detroit Tigers were incandescent and had carved out a seemingly intractable lead in the division. They were 14 games up on their closest challengers, and 15.5 up on the Cleveland Guardians, who were not even in the conversation. They weren't in the conversation you moved onto after the first conversation ran dry, either. They were dead in the water.
By the morning of Sept. 10, the Guardians were still becalmed, but the Tigers had cooled. The lead was 9.5 games, still sizable, still safe—if in declaring a divisional lead safe you relied on things like "mathematical probability" (Fangraphs had Detroit's chances of winning the division at 99.9 percent) and "historical performance" (the largest-ever comeback/collapse in the divisional era of MLB is the Yankees reeling in the Red Sox after trailing by 14 games on July 19, 1978).
Sept. 10 was not long ago! Nine and a half games is a lot! And yet, a turn to the standings this morning shows the Tigers' lead over Cleveland at one. Measly. Game. "What a miserable ride this has been," Detroit manager AJ Hinch said.
It looked for most of Saturday's game like the Tigers would be able to slow the ride enough to hop off and stumble away dizzily. They were playing the Braves, who had been officially eliminated the night before and have nothing to play for but pride, and they had a 5-3 lead through seven innings. But the bullpen collapsed, and Atlanta rookie Nacho Alvarez Jr. hit his first two career home runs and tied the game in the ninth with a single before Jurickson Profar completed the comeback with an RBI single of his own. 6-5 Braves. The miserable ride speeds up.
"It's difficult to accept," Hinch said. "It's difficult to explain. It's hard to put into words what's going on. But I know how much we fought today. I know how well we played. And then just an absolute punch right in the face."
The Tigers, 21 games over .500 in the first half of the season, are six under in the second half. The collapse is accelerating. They're 5-12 in September, and have lost five straight, including getting swept by the Guardians last week. But a lead of 15.5 games doesn't disappear with just a collapse; a lead that large needs both parties to play their parts. And Cleveland is obliging.
The Guardians are 16-4 this month, and 38-22 in the second half. They've won 10 straight, after Saturday's 6-0, 8-0 sweep of a doubleheader with the Twins.
"[T]hey have not lost the faith that we are a very good team and we can do this," manager Stephen Vogt said. But what's especially fascinating about this run is that the Guardos do not actually appear to be a very good team. They're rolling six starters. Their all-star closer is at the center of a gambling investigation. Their lineup is Jose Ramirez and eight opossums found in a dumpster behind a Donatos. How're they doing this despite having the lowest team batting average in baseball? Good ol' run prevention, a staple of Guardianball over the last few years—solid defense and red-hot starting pitching, which has allowed just 15 earned runs over their last 16 starts. If there's anything to take from Saturday's doubleheader blowout, it's the zero runs allowed rather than the 14 scored.
With eight days left in the regular season, a whole lot is still up in the air. Cleveland owns the season tiebreaker, but that could still change. But Cleveland is also in playoff position now, tied with Houston for the third and final wild card spot, both one back of Boston. There are a lot of moving parts. MLB's schedulemakers have helpfully simplified things by having the Tigers head to Cleveland for three games this week, three games that should go a long way to determining whether the largest comeback in the history of the sport falls short, or whether the Tigers' miserable ride ends by hitting a brick wall.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated who owns the tiebreaker.
