I Give Up - I Can’t Figure the AL Central Out
I know that I spend more time talking about the AL Central than anything else in baseball, but it is just so darned fascinating that you can’t look away - it’s like simultaneous car crashes. I was just about to sit down and right a comment of some sort about how the Tigers were finally showing some signs of life - they had won three straight after all, and their offense was hitting on all cylinders. I was also going to throw in a comment about how troubled Cleveland was - they were supposed to be neck and neck with Detroit, and they were, but it wasn’t supposed to be at 5-10. I had been busy all day, and I hadn’t checked out the scores all day, so I took a quick look before making my comments. So much for that article. After Detroit blew away the Indians 13-2 yesterday, they are now trailing Cleveland 11-1 in the 8th.
Cleveland’s best pitcher is C.C. Sabathia. Supposedly. You’d never guess it from the mess that he put out yesterday - nine earned runs in four innings. That moves him to 0-3, and raises some real concerns for backers of the team. I probably would have talked about that for a while, and then tried to find a comparison with the Tigers that made Detroit look better - you know, to build the the argument that Detroit was getting better. So much for that. Justin Verlander, Detroit’s best pitcher, went out tonight and threw out another stinker. He allowed five earned runs in five innings, and unless the Tigers make a miraculous comeback in the ninth he will move to a matching 0-3 record. To confound my problems, I probably would have made some comment about how Fausto Carmona signed a rich new contract and promptly went out and sucked badly in his first game as a rich man. That argument is pretty irrelevant now that Carmona went out and allowed just one run in six and two thirds tonight.
The point is that I have given up trying to figure out what is going on in this division. To make it more confounding, the teams that were supposed to be fighting for the spot at the bottom of the league - Chicago and Kansas City - are instead dueling at the top. It’s things like the start this division is enjoying (some of the teams, anyway) that are good for sports bettors - they remind us that logic isn’t an infallible tool. Sometimes things just don’t make sense, so you might as welll just sit back and enjoy the ride. Enjoy the car wreck, and just make sure that you don’t get caught in it.
Tags: AL Central, Baseball, Cleveland Indians, detroit tigers, MLB
