That ought to shut up the AL Central critics.
The Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers both swept supposedly superior teams in the AL Wild Card round, advancing to the American League Division Series.
They now join the division champion Cleveland Guardians to comprise three-fourths of the surviving American League bracket.
It’s not how the game’s wise ones had it figured. They assumed the Astros – with an AL West title, home field advantage and seven consecutive ALCS appearances – were too much for a Tiger team that only has one true starting pitcher.
And they were even more certain that the 91-win Baltimore Orioles, their talent tested in the AL East cauldron, would make short work of the visiting Royals, who looked less than inspiring during an 11-14 September finish, and whose three-hole hitter was recovering from a broken bone in his hand..
As for the Tigers and Royals, their regular season success was assumed to be the byproduct of fortune, namely playing in the same division as the woeful 121-loss Chicago White Sox. It’s a matter of record that they went a collective 22-4 against the Southsiders.
As the Orioles and Astros can regretfully testify, a reassessment of the lightly regarded AL Central is now in order.
Time to reassess AL Central's might after Wild Card round of 2024 MLB Playoffs
Here’s the data powering that reassessment.
First, the Guardians, Royals and Tigers were a collective 104-87 against the AL East and West. That’s a .545 winning percentage.
The Guardians won the season series against seven of the 10 AL East and West teams.
Only the Yankees and Royals had a greater plus scoring margin than the Royals, whose 4.56 runs per game was more than a half run greater than their 3.98 runs allowed per game. The Guardians were right behind them in a tie with Baltimore in fourth; the Tigers were seventh behind the above mentioned five teams, plus Seattle.
Scoring a lot more runs than you allow is probably the single best indicator of overall superiority, so the fact that the three remaining AL Central teams were all among the top seven is worth noting.
Looking purely at season-over-season improvement in wins, the Royals (+30), Guardians (+16) and Tigers (+8) were first second and fourth in the AL in 2024. Only the Yankees, third with a 12-game improvement, broke up the Central’s hegemony in that category.
Perhaps the single most interesting postseason factoid to date is this. Since the Wild Card format was expanded to allow the possibility for three teams from the same division to qualify for postseason play, the Guardians, Tigers and Royals (along with the NL East Phillies, Mets and Braves) are the 10th and 11th trios from the same division to do so. But they are the first of those 11 to unanimously survive past the Wild Card round.