Spare Parts: The sinking of the AL Central

Sep 01, 2023

The time has long since passed to care about the top of the AL Central standings, but when it comes to the White Sox, I’m mostly paying attention to how far they finish behind the Tigers.

The White Sox are currently eight games back of Detroit, a team that was supposed to finish well behind the Sox in the standings. It’d be one thing if the Tigers were this year’s version of the 2022 Orioles, a team propelled by some ahead-of-schedule young talent and supported by a lockdown bullpen that preserved just about every small margin in their favor.

The Tigers kinda have that bullpen going for them — they’re five games better than their 52-72 Pythagorean record — but they’ve scored fewer runs than any team in baseball except Oakland, so it’s fair to call them a bad team. The White Sox are somehow worse.

After 120-something games in the thick of it, it’s easy to become numb to the decrepit state of the AL Central, but it’s worth refreshing one’s memory every once in a while. That the White Sox are in fourth place in this specific division in this specific year is the best argument for cleaning house.

The Athletic’s remaining AL Central writers teamed up to provide a week in a life of baseball’s laughingstock, the division where the Twins are apparently slinking away with the division by standing pat.

Before this year, the 2018 season held the record for the worst division in history, when — you guessed it — the AL Central mustered a combined winning percentage of only .436. This year’s AL Central has a combined winning percentage of .433. Four of the division’s five teams have losing records, and they have combined for a run differential of minus-334. Only the fourth-place White Sox ranked higher than 15th in Opening Day payroll. […]

The 65-60 Twins hold a six-game edge on the Guardians. Minnesota’s lineup has struggled, ranking eighth in OPS and ninth in runs per game among AL teams. But when compared to their four division rivals — the league’s lowest-scoring non-Oakland lineups — the Twins resemble a powerhouse, even though they might break MLB’s all-time strikeout record.

Yet even when they falter, it hardly matters. Seven of the Twins’ last 10 losses have come on days when the Guardians have also lost, thus increasing Minnesota’s chances of winning the division by simply erasing another game from the respective schedules.

It’d be a lot easier to throw some late-season support for the Orioles if it weren’t for John Angelos, who is doing everything he can to make the season feel tenuous. Baltimore did not make any major additions at the deadline, they’re holding up agreeing on a new lease for Camden Yards because Angelos wants public funds to develop lands that aren’t his, and he’s also threatening the future of their core.

Without major changes, he sees only one way the team could retain all of its young stars.

“We’re going to have to raise the prices here — dramatically,” he said.

Speaking of public funds, John Sherman continues on his quest to move the Royals out of Kauffman Stadium with hopes of building a ballpark village like in Atlanta and St. Louis, except his team happens to be worse than the White Sox.

And to wrap up this tour of teams that are run just as shoddily as the White Sox in one respect or another, the Angels and Blue Jays still won’t pay for their radio announcers to travel with the teams.