On July 8, the Cleveland Guardians were 15.5 games back of the Detroit Tigers. On Sept. 10, they were still 9.5 games back of the Tigers.
On Wednesday, they moved one game ahead of the Tigers.
With a 5-1 win over the Tigers, the Guardians seized sole control of the AL Central with four games left in the regular season, placing themselves on the cusp of the biggest comeback in the standings in the history of MLB. The largest deficit a team has ever made up in the standings to win a division is 15 games, a record held by the 1914 Boston Braves.
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The 86-72 Guardians also hold the head-to-head tiebreaker against the Tigers, making their lead a de facto two-game advantage.
As recently as two weeks ago, the Guardians had a 0.1% chance to win the division in FanGraphs’ playoff odds. Those odds have shifted so much that BetMGM has them as -700 favorites to take the Central as of Wednesday night.
José RamÃrez hit a two-run double in Cleveland’s victory Wednesday against Detroit. (Photo by Jason Miller/Getty Images)
(Jason Miller via Getty Images)
Cleveland has won 17 of its past 19 games, while Detroit has lost 11 of its past 12. They are two teams playing some of the best and worst baseball the league has seen this season, and the Tigers are providing very few signs that the tide will change in the next few days.
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It’s hard to overstate just how out-of-nowhere this Guardians run is. They traded away starting pitcher Shane Bieber and reliever Paul Sewald, the latter to the Tigers, at the trade deadline. They are still without All-Star closer Emmanuel Clase and starting pitcher Luis Ortiz due to a gambling investigation. They have the sixth-lowest payroll in MLB. Even with this run, they have a negative run differential, with the second-worst offense in baseball by batting average.
And yet they are on the verge of sweeping the Tigers in the biggest series of the season, after winning 5-2 on Tuesday in a game in which Detroit started the presumptive AL Cy Young winner in Tarik Skubal.