Since becoming a division, the AL Central has largely been the laughingstock of the American League. From 1994 through 2011, only four AL Pennant winners came from the Central and only one won the World Series (the White Sox in 2005). Since then, things have been looking up as three of the last four AL Champions have come out of the Central and after just one Wild Card winner from 1995 through 2012, two have found the back door to the play-offs since.
If it wasn’t enough for the Royals to win the World Series last year, three teams finished above .500 (the third time in a row and eighth time overall in 22 seasons) and all three were legitimate contenders for the Wild Card until the final weeks of the season. While in almost every off-season, each division has teams that are building, maintaining and deconstructing, this winter each of the AL Central teams was looking to improve in order to compete for the 2016 Central title. While there have been different levels of this, not one single major player has been traded out of the division and very few free agents of note have escaped the Central.
In general, with the Yankees silent, Boston playing it low after signing David Price and nothing much coming out of the AL West at all, the Central has been the busiest division this off-season. The Tigers have been the biggest spenders, but the Twins and Indians have added minor free agents to fill holes while the White Sox snared Todd Frazier for cheap in a three way trade and the Royals have brought back their two biggest exiting free agents, Chris Young and Alex Gordon.
For some historical perspective, the AL Central has never been like this before. As already mentioned, only eight times have three teams even finished above .500, but six times there has only been a single team above .500 and in nine seasons there has been a team under .400 compared to just three teams above .600 in 22 years. In both 1999 and 2002, two teams finished under .400 as the Royals and Tigers combined for 400 losses across those two years. For a full breakdown on how each team has done individually, check out the chart below.
| 1994-2015 | Records | Final Standings | Total Seasons | |||||||||
| Team | Total W | Total L | W% | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 4th | 5th | Avg | >.500 | 0.5 | <.500 |
| Indians | 1,828 | 1,666 | .523 | 7 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 0 | 2.4 | 13 | 1 | 8 |
| White Sox | 1,776 | 1,720 | .508 | 4 | 9 | 5 | 3 | 1 | 2.5 | 11 | 1 | 10 |
| Twins | 1,693 | 1,776 | .488 | 6 | 3 | 2 | 5 | 6 | 3.1 | 10 | 0 | 12 |
| Tigers | 1,384 | 1,530 | .475 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 5 | 3.1 | 7 | 1 | 10 |
| Brewers | 276 | 306 | .474 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 3.8 | 0 | 0 | 4 |
| Royals | 1,564 | 1,931 | .447 | 1 | 2 | 5 | 5 | 9 | 3.9 | 5 | 0 | 17 |
While only the Royals and White Sox have actually won the World Series, the Indians come out looking golden when looking at the entire Wild Card era. They lead in total wins, winnings percent, average finish, most first place finishes, seasons above .500 and are the only team not to finish alone in last place a single time (they did tie with the Royals for 4th in 2009). The Tigers and Royals may have jumped to glory over the past few years, but that hasn’t done much to improve their overall records, particularly considering Kansas City’s 17 seasons below .500.
If there was an average team in the Central in the Division’s history, it has to be the Twins, who have a few division titles and a few last place finishes. Their .488 winning percentage overall is exactly the same as that of the division since 1994 and like the rest of the division from 1994 through 2004, they never won the World Series.
| 1994-2015 | Play-Offs | WC | ALDS | ALCS | WS | |||||||||
| Team | Div. | WC | W | L | W% | W | L | W% | W | L | W% | W | L | W% |
| Indians | 7 | 1 | 0 | 1 | .000 | 17 | 13 | .567 | 13 | 12 | .520 | 5 | 8 | .385 |
| White Sox | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | – | 4 | 6 | .400 | 4 | 1 | .800 | 4 | 0 | 1.000 |
| Twins | 6 | 0 | 0 | 0 | – | 5 | 17 | .227 | 1 | 4 | .200 | 0 | 0 | – |
| Tigers | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 | – | 12 | 10 | .545 | 12 | 8 | .600 | 1 | 8 | .111 |
| Royals | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 1.000 | 6 | 2 | .750 | 8 | 2 | .800 | 7 | 5 | .583 |
The chart above shows the aggregate play-off results for each team in each round and speaking of the Twins and the World Series, they are the only team who hasn’t made it. Considering that the division had to have a champion each year after 1994, you would expect a few World Series appearances and each the Indians, Tigers and Royals have had two. Because of their extended success in the 1990’s, the Indians have more ALDS and ALCS wins than any other team while the Tigers have put up all their post-season numbers much more recently.
Bringing us back to the potential in 2016, never before has every team had a legitimate shot at winning the division in the same year. While projections are never completely accurate, they do give an idea and FanGraphs has the entire division within six games this year with the Indians on top with 84 wins and the Twins on the bottom with 78. Looking at full seasons, there have only been two years where the Central was separated by less than 20 games between first and last (1997 and 2008) with nine seasons being separated by 30 or more games.
Over the last two seasons, teams have been creeping closer together as the last place Twins finished just 20 games back in 2014 and the Tigers just 20.5 last year. Taking some of the Tigers injury woes out of the consideration, as late as May 27th last year, there were three teams within one game of first with only the White Sox and Indians seven games out. By June 13th, the Royals had separated from the other two top teams at the time, but the entire division was still within 6.5 games. As Kansas City steamrolled to the finish 12 games ahead of the Twins, the rest of the division sitting within 8.5 games and the Tigers being the worst at just 6.5 games below .500.
While all five teams are in contention mode right now, they are not all at the same place in their contention windows. In fact, they provide a look at the entire spectrum of contention as the Tigers are the oldest with the most experience and most likely to be out of contention by 2017. The Royals just came out of what was their best season in this window and may or may not be able to repeat it, but should be near the top of the division for at least a few more years. The Indians are a little younger and have their prime talent under control for longer, so should be seriously contending this year for the first time with this rotation and defense. At the young end, the White Sox have had a stable team for a few years, but still haven’t proven much and the Twins are as young as you can get. Their rookies lead the offense last year and they will expect even more from the kids this year as Byron Buxton will play his first full season and not-quite-a-kid Byung-ho Park will be making his MLB debut.
Because of the incredible variance of rookies and injury prone veterans, the more stable franchises of the Indians and Royals are expected to be at the top of the division, but if the Twins young talent can produce to their full potential or the Tigers can stay healthy any one of these teams could win the division. Even with that variability, it would be incredibly surprising to see any of these teams finish below 75 wins and wouldn’t be a shock to see them extend that closeness from 2015 from June all the way through August.
The Central has always been pretty easy to predict. There have been one or two good teams and three that were well behind. This year is going to be different and it should be really interesting and entertaining all season long to watch this marathon.
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