The AL Central is Historically Bad

The middle part of our country has a hard time of it. Call up the clichés: Rust Belt. Flyover country. Forgotten Americans.

The coasts have Hollywood and the City by the Bay and Mike Trout, Broadway and the Smithsonian and Aaron Judge. What’s in between has the American League Central Division.

Pity the AL Central. Its five unglamorous cities house five unglamorous teams that, collectively, are on pace for a historically bad season.

As of June 25, FanGraphs’ projected standings show the Central teams will wind up, in total, losing 88 games more than they win, with only Cleveland, as the worst of the six division winners, over .500. Since Major League Baseball split itself six ways in 1994, no division has had a worse season by that measure.

Alas, it’s nothing new. Blame it on small markets, blame it on these teams’ inability to attract the very best free agents, blame it on unwise or tightfisted ownership; heck, blame it on Midwest weather. There’s a history of this. Thirteen times in the 24 years we’re looking at, the AL Central or its National League middle-of-the-continent cousin has been the worst division in baseball. This looks like 14.

Now, far be it from me to disparage the Midwest. I was born there and educated there, left and then returned of my own free will at one point. I have no bias against the cities that form the woebegone AL Central. I grew up on the South Side of Chicago, home of the Central Division’s White Sox, the esteemed University of Chicago, and an unfortunate reputation. I lived 10 years in Detroit, nine more winters than anybody ought to spend in Michigan. “Cleveland without the glitter,” Time magazine once called it. But we had fun there.

Cleveland, for its part, has plenty of elbow room, since it, like Detroit, has lost two-thirds of its population in my lifetime. And it has the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, which does not discriminate on the basis of substances ingested. Kansas City has famous barbecue and fountains, so good for it. Minneapolis, the only major league city I’ve never set foot in, reportedly has very nice people and is not as cold as Nome, Alaska.

So these are swell places. They deserve better baseball teams. But, as a whole, they don’t get them.

This year, Cleveland was expected to be the class of the division, but that was when pitchers Carlos Carrasco, Danny Salazar and Andrew Miller weren’t injured. And if star outfielder Michael Brantley makes it through the season, it’ll be his first summer without injuries since he started riding a two-wheeler.

The Twins keep being right on the edge of being good, everyone says, with perpetual can’t-miss prospects Miguel Sano and Byron Buxton. Sano, striking out 40 percent of the time, got sent to A-ball recently, and Buxton has been on the disabled list with an OPS holding steady at .383.

Which is, to be fair, considerably higher than the winning percentage of the Kansas City Royals, who will be paying Alex Gordon, who once hit .300 for a season, $20 million a year for approximately the rest of his life.

That transitions to the shocking news that young Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers is out for the rest of the year, which is really going to hurt his chances for a big payday when his contract runs out in 2023. When he’s 40. Now Detroit must rely on Victor Martinez for youthful enthusiasm.

That leaves my hometown White Sox. Like their city-mates the Cubs of a few years ago, they are reputed to have a fine crop growing on the farm, but they see no reason to harvest it in a lost season.

The dubious standard these 2018 teams are chasing was established in 2002, when five teams in one division combined to lose 76 more games than they won. The division was…the AL Central!  Who’d have imagined it?

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear. In that 2002 season, only Minnesota was over .500. The Tigers and Royals both lost 100-plus. Steve Sparks got to pitch 189 innings with a 5.52 earned run average for a Detroit team that scored the fewest runs in the majors. Kansas City trotted out Neifi Perez and his .564 OPS 145 times. Jim Thome’s 1.122 OPS went to waste in Cleveland, while Victor Martinez provided youthful enthusiasm. The White Sox (Magglio Ordonez, Frank Thomas, Paul Konerko, etc.) hit lots of home runs.

Next worst was the same division the next year, 2003, when the same five franchises combined to lose 70 more games than they won. The Tigers contributed mightily, at 43-113. Detroit’s ERA and FIP starting pitcher leader, 23-year old Nate Cornejo, walked more batters than he struck out. He would win one more major league game after that season. Brandon Inge’s .203 batting average was best among the team’s catchers, though A.J. Hinch managed a mighty 64 wRC+ in part-time work. The White Sox, Indians and Tigers left more men on base than any other team in the majors.

Then there was a 1999 division, at minus 69. Which one? I’ll keep you guessing. Hint: Only Cleveland among the five teams had a winning record. The White Sox lost 11 games more than they won and still finished second. LaTroy Hawkins and Mike Lincoln were members of last-place Minnesota’s starting rotation despite ERAs north of six and a half. Ron Coomer hit 16 home runs for a Twins team that had the fewest in baseball. Stars-to-be-elsewhere Carlos Beltran, Johnny Damon and Jermaine Dye notwithstanding, the Royals were just one win better than the Twins. The 23-games-under .500 Tigers featured future managers Gabe Kapler and Brad Ausmus and future players association head Tony Clark.

The rest of the bottom 10:

• The 2005 National League West (minus 66), with the 82-80 Padres far ahead of everyone else.The 2006 NL Central (minus 65). The Cardinals took the division with 83 wins.
• The 2002 NL Central (minus 63). That year was the epitome of the Central problem, what with the AL Central setting the record for futility and its National League counterpart burdened by Milwaukee’s 56-106 record.
• The 2015 NL East (minus 62). The Mets won 90 games; three teams lost more than that.
• The 2008 NL West (minus 60). Arizona won 82 games and still finished just two behind the Dodgers.
• The 2010 National League Central (minus 58). As on the high seas, the Pirates were the villains, losing 105 games.
• The 1998 AL Central (minus 57). Detroit replaced Milwaukee in the division that year and lost 97 games. (This is a good place to acknowledge that baseball’s divisions have shifted a bit over the years with expansion and a couple of teams changing leagues. But, as Kipling wrote, east is east and west is west and never the Twins shall …)

I’ll spare you any more, except to state the obvious: People aren’t turning out in large numbers to watch these teams. This season, each AL Central team is in the majors’ bottom third in per-game attendance. Only Minnesota hasn’t dropped significantly from last year (when the division was no great shakes either).

As for the flip side, the best division in the majors so far this season is the AL West, whose teams are projected to win 56 more games than they lose. Only the Rangers are on pace for a below-.500 record. That division only twice has had a bottom-of-the heap season: 2013 (remember when the Astros stunk?) and the strike-demolished 1994. Same for the NL East, both recently — 2015 and 2017, with the rebuilding Phillies and Braves and the woebegone Marlins.

References and Resources

• Baseball-Almanac
• Baseball-Reference
• FanGraphs