Backing their way to the top

White Sox second baseman Gordon Beckham leaves the
field as the Kansas City Royals celebrate a 4-3 win
on Thursday.

A week ago today the Chicago White Sox took a three-game lead on the Detroit Tigers, and I opined in the next day's post that it would be "mighty difficult" for the Tigers to make up that ground in what remained of the season.

Today the Sox have lost five in a row, and the only reason they're still in first place is that the lowly Twins swept Detroit in a doubleheader Sunday.

Matt Carson slides into Detroit catcher Alex Avila during
the fifth inning of Sunday's second game. Avila threw the
ball into right field, allowing the Twins to tie the
game. It was Detroit's second error of the inning.

One of Chicago and Detroit is going to win the American League Central title, and I'm not sure either really deserves to.  There probably weren't a lot of Minnesotans watching the Twins-Tigers game Sunday afternoon instead of the Vikings-49ers, but I was one — and Detroit put on such a ghastly display in the field in the sixth inning that the notion of the Tigers in the playoffs seems laughable.

The Twins plated five runs that inning. All were officially earned, but by my reckoning the Tigers gave the Twins five extra outs and about eight bases. They played one fly ball into a triple, another into a single, failed to turn a double play, turned another grounder into an infield hit, threw two wild pitches, and mistook a tag play for a force out.

Which provided one of my favorite quotes of the 2012 season, Tigers manager Jim Leyland on pitcher Brayan Villarreal thinking he had a force play at the plate on a wild pitch: "He's probably not an expert on the rule book, to be honest with you."

Chicago and Detroit are clearly better this year than Kansas City, Cleveland or the Twins, but whoever emerges from this death grip on mediocrity will be no more than the seventh best team in the league.

Around the AL Central: Chicago White Sox

The "Smells Like Mascot" take on the White Sox winter.

There is a different sense about the Chicago White Sox this year. Mark Buehrle, the rotation anchor for most of the past decade, is gone. Ozzie Guillen, for better or worse the focal point of the clubhouse for eight seasons, is gone. Kenny Williams, the (overly) aggressive general manager, has pulled in the reins. Robin Ventura, who has never managed on any level, is the dugout boss.

The Twins had the most disappointing season in all of baseball last year, but the White Sox were pretty unhappy with their lack of achievement too. Last year's motto, after all, was "All in." Now Williams is talking about rebuilding -- and that's not easy to do when you have (a) a collection of immovable contracts -- Alex Rios, Adam Dunn, Jake Peavy -- and (b) what is widely regarded as the weakest farm system in the game.

Old habits die hard, and the habit of regarding the Sox as a threat in the division is not dead yet. Wounded, but still breathing.

Much depends on those three aforementioned big-money disappointments. Peavy had five no-hit innings last weekend and says he feels better than he has since coming to Chicago. Dunn's horrendous 2011 may have been linked to his appendectomy and hurried return; that kind of falloff is otherwise inexplicable. I suspect he's primed for a good season. Rios has been bad two of the past three seasons; perhaps moving him out of center field will snap him back to the production he had as a right fielder in Toronto.

I don't see a middle ground here. If the big-money guys stink it up again and Ventura is over his head as manager, this could be a disaster; if Ventura instills a calmer atmosphere and the veterans snap back to the levels that got them their big contracts, they may even contend.

Around the AL Central: Cleveland Indians

Important if true: Cleveland manager Manny Acta
this week described second baseman Jason Kipnis as a
cross between Dustin Pedroia and Chase Utley.

The 2011 Indians had pretty low expectations, but they were sensational for the first half of the season before tailing off and finishing a notch below .500.

It was a young team, and the conventional expectation is that a young team that suddenly emerges will continue to grow into the role of contender. And sometimes, as with the Twins in the early years of the previous decade, that does happen.

More frequently, it's a case of two steps forward, one step back. Which is rather what I expect is going to happen for the Tribe this year.

There are aspects of the Cleveland team that can go better in 2012 than they did in 2011. Shin-Soo Choo is better than he played last year. Carlos Santana's a better hitter than he showed last year. Grady Sizemore keeps on getting injured.

There were also aspects of the Cleveland team in 2011 that, quite frankly, seem rather flukey. Asdrubal Cabrera, as a primary example. Is the shortstop really a 25-homer guy? He's never shown power to be part of his skill set before.

Much of the lineup has question marks like that, or worse. Everybody seems to be either trying to bounce back from something or to be trying to establish that they really are that good.

Same thing with the starting rotation, which may be the key to the Indians' hopes.. We can name the Indians starters -- Justin Masterson, Ubaldo Jimenez, Josh Tomlin, Derek Lowe, Kevin Slowey -- but none of them have a current established level of performance that they can be comfortable about.

Masterson, for example. Wish the Twins had him. But his ERA ballooned about 1.3 runs in the second half last season. Tomlin spent the first half doing a great Brad Radke impersonation, then finished the year on the shelf.  Lowe pretty clearly ain't what he used to be, and Jimenez had an ERA above 5 after coming over from Colorado.

Then there's the whole "pitcher to be named" Fausto Carmona fiasco, in which a starter who has been a centerpiece of the Cleveland rotation for five years turned out to be somebody else entirely. Roberto Hernandez Heredia is not going to readily get a visa after this false identity scam.

Which is why Slowey is getting a shot with the Tribe. The Twins castaway, a fly ball pitcher to the extreme, at least gives Cleveland a different look. Masterson and Lowe throw almost nothing but hard sinkers; that's also Jimenez's best pitch; that was also Carmona/Heredia 's bread and butter.

Cleveland went 80-82 last year with a set of stats that suggest a 75-win team. They might get better; I think they'll regress some.

Around the AL Central: Detroit Tigers

Miguel Cabrera is reported to have
lost at least 20 pounds over the winter
in preparation for his return to
third base, suggesting this was in
the works well before the signing
of Prince Fielder.

The 2011 Detroit Tigers won 94 games, which is a nice figure but probably a bit of an over achievement, as they had the stats of an 89-win team.

The 2010 Twins won 94 games also, with the stats of a 92-win team, and we know what happened to them the following season.

Nobody expected that debacle, and I'm hardly here to predict a similar fate for the Tigers. The Twins collapse was, as far as I tell, historically unique, to have a drop-off that drastic without trying to tank the season (a la the 1915 Athletics or the 1998 Marlins). But while the Tigers have reason to be optimistic about 2012 -- more reason, really, than anybody else in the division this March -- it's worth remembering that they have flaws.

Yes, they added Prince Fielder. They also subtracted Victor Martinez, who had a marvelous season. The exchange doesn't add all that much to the offense -- and takes away a bit on the defensive side, because the Tigers are moving Miguel Cabrera to third base to make room for Fielder at first.

Fielder, who has trouble scooping low throws (probably because his belly gets in the way) figures to be a slight downgrade from Cabrera at first. And Cabrera at third ... well, the Tigers moved him off third base in 2008 because he was such a defensive disaster there. He has clearly slimmed down considerably this offseason, but I would expect that the absolute best the Tigers can hope for is that he's merely a below-average defensive third baseman.

This is not unfamiliar territory for Jim Leyland; he won his World Series with Bobby Bonilla engaged in a daily war with the position (Marlins, 1997).

The Tigers have prodigious strong points. Justin Verlander is Justin Verlander. Cabrera and Fielder represent the best middle-of-the-lineup duo in the game. Any team with those three guys at the top of their games should be a serious contender, no matter the rest of the roster.

But this is also a team with some serious weaknesses. The infield could be a defensive disaster; the only regular with speed is Austin Jackson; the on-base percentages, aside from Cabrera and Fielder, range from OK to dismal. There is, on a purely logical level, an insanity to a lineup with Cabrera, Fielder and Delmon Young in which a fourth player is the DH. (The reason for the insanity is quite sane; Leyland wants to keep his stars happy, and none of them are willing to embrace the DH role.)

Do you remember the White Sox of the early 2000s? They had a flock of potent but immobile hitters: Frank Thomas, Carlos Lee, Magglio Ordonez, Paul Konerko, Jose Valentin ... they had four hitters better than anybody in the Twins lineup. Once a week or so they'd run up a football score on somebody, just embarrass a pitching staff. And they'd follow a 13-run game with three games in a row of one or two runs, and they couldn't win pitchers duels because of their defense and dependency on the long ball. And it was the Twins who won divisional titles.

I can see something along those lines happening for this Tigers team. There's a lot here, but there's some significant stuff missing as well. The rest of the division has to hope this mirrors 2008, when the Tigers expected to score 1,000 runs and instead fell apart on lousy defense, injuries and a little bad luck.

Favorites? Sure, the Tigers are the favorites. But there is reason to play the season.

Around the AL Central: Kansas City Royals

Man, this is going to be one tough team to pitch to. Maybe not to so much this year, but down the road, as these kids get more major league experience and a better understanding of how pitchers are working them ... The Royals now have lot of hitting talent, with some more percolating up through the system.

Things are looking up for the Royals,
including Lorenzo Cain (foreground)
and Wil Myers.

A logical lineup for Ned Yost:

Lorenzo Cain, CF
Johnny Giovotella, 2B
Alex Gordon, LF
Eric Hosmer, 1B
Billy Butler, DH
Mike Moustakas, 3B
Jeff Francoeur, RF
Salvador Perez, C
Alcides Escobar, SS

You may not be real familiar with a lot of those names, but you will be. A lot of high draft picks there -- the fruit of almost 25 straight seasons of sub-.500 ball finally paying off. Hosmer didn't win the AL Rookie of the Year award last year (Tampa Bay's Jeremy Hellickson did), but he wouldn't have been a bad choice at all. Moustakas' rookie numbers don't look good in total, but he erupted in the final month. Perez so impressed the Royals that they signed him to what may be an eight-year deal.

This team will hit. It's skewed a bit to the left side, but it will hit.

Pitch, not so much. The Royals have run into the injury bugaboo with some of their starting pitching prospects, some of whom are nearly as highly touted as their young hitters. As long as Luke Hochaver is their No. 1 starter, it's going to be tough for the Royals to contend.

The bullpen was pretty good last season, and there are Twins fans who are envious of K.C.'s acquistion of former Dodgers closer Jonathan Broxton this offseason. Broxton hasn't been effective for some time, however, and I suspect his chief value is as a security blanket that allows the Royals to move Aaron Crow, who made the All-Star team as a rookie middle reliever, to the rotation.

If Crow takes to starting (his minor league record is pretty dismal), and if the 30-start rule applies to Danny Duffy, and if Jonathan Sanchez somehow discovers the strike zone in the American League ... well, then Hochaver and Bruce Chen slide down from being their top two starters to being their fourth and fifth arms, and in that case the Royals might even win this divisional title

But that's asking for a lot of things to go right. Even if they don't, I fully expect the Royals to take a big step forward in 2012. They're primed to be "phony contenders" the way Cleveland was last season.

Can't take 'em seriously

It was just an ill-played game all around for
Minnesota on Monday.

Monday's loss was just one loss, not two or three. But coming as it did on the heels of a disappointing series split with Cleveland and disastrous series loss to Detroit, the 20-6 beatdown in Texas pretty much beat my 2011 illusions out of me.

This team ain't winning the division.

Those discouraging words having been heard, let's look at the facts.

Detroit, in first place by a single game, is 54-48, which leaves them 60 games to play. If they merely play .500 ball the rest of the way, they'll finish 84-78.

The Twins are 47-55, which also leaves them 60 games to play. To get to 84 wins, they'll have to go 37-23, a .617 pace.

But even that requires that the other two teams ahead of the Twins, Cleveland and Chicago, co-coperate. The Twins have three teams to leapfrog.

Uh oh

It was a spectacular play by Alexi Casilla behind
second base on Ryan Raburn's grounder — spectacular
but ineffective, as Raburn easily beat it out.

The notion was floated here July 7 that we would know by the end of play on July 24 — 18 days, 16 games — if the Twins truly had a shot at winning another AL Central title.

We're still two days, two games, away from the 24th, but we know that the Twins won't hit the 12-4 mark I thought then was necessary. Nor will they go 11-5. They stand now 8-6. They entered this stretch eight games out of first place; they enter today seven games out.

Seven games behind Detroit, and 0-7 against Detroit. The correlation is obvious.

As was the case Thursday against Justin Verlander, the Twins couldn't do anything against Max Scherzer and his mid 90s fastball. I see a trend developing.

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If there are any blog readers attending Bert Blyleven's Hall of Fame induction Sunday, I'd like to hear from you. Send me an email at ethoma@mankatofreepress.com.

Sixteen games to decide the course of the season

If the Twins can sweep Ozzie Guillen's White Sox in
their four-game series starting tonight, Minnesota will
go into the All-Star break in third place. Anything less, fourth.

The Twins this morning stand nine games below .500. They have the fifth worst record in the 14-team American League and are eight games out of first place in the AL Central.

Yet, considering their history of late-season improvement, their record of dominance in head-to-head play in the division, and the fact that they lead the majors in wins since June 1, they are hardly out of the running.

Not out of it, but not truly in it, at least right now.

That, plus the creeping proximity of the non-waiver trade deadline at the end of the month, makes this stretch of the schedule so crucial.

Sixteen games in 18 days (including the All-Star break and a make-up doubleheader), all against division opponents, the bulk of them in the suddenly Twins-friendly environment of Target Field.

Contenders or pretenders? We'll have a decision by the end of these 16 games. Merely breaking even won't be enough for this team, not with the hole they dug for themselves in April and May. Even 10-6 seems inadequate in this context. I'm looking for something along the lines of 12-4.

That's a high standard, but it's the result of their poor play in the first two months. If they're still fourth after these 16 games, if they still trail the leader by their current eight games, the front office should be in sell mode at months end.