Royals, Tigers and Sox ... Oh My
Here in Winston-Salem this morning (I think) getting ready for my Bookmarks Festival WHY WE LOVE FOOTBALL event on this lovely Saturday morning, and I only have a couple of minutes, but Friday night’s baseball action does require a few words, I think. As always, please excuse the typos and errors. I’m not even going to ask our intrepid editor Larry to read this one.
The Detroit Tigers won their sixth game in a row — their incredible 31st victory in 42 games — and clinched the second-most unlikely playoff spot of 2024. I honestly cannot remember a team roaring into the playoffs quite the way these Tigers have.
On August 10, this team was 55-63, seven games out of the final wildcard spot, but even more than that: They were basically invisible. Nobody talked about the Tigers. Nobody thought about them. What was there to say or think? They entered the year with eight straight losing seasons, they had four different managers over that time (assuming you count Lloyd McClendon who managed the last eight games of 2020), and the whole A.J. Hinch thing just didn’t seem to be working. This year, pitcher Tarik Skubal emerged as a superstar, but pretty much every one of their other mega-hyped prospects was flailing or hurt and you couldn’t help but wonder if it was time for another reset.
Seven or so weeks later, and the Tigers are the hottest team in baseball entering October. Some of those mega-hyped prospects like 23-year-old Riley Greene (who will get some downballot MVP votes this year) and 22-year-old Colt Keith and, of course, Skubal, who will the Cy Young Award, are putting things together. This is a team playing with energy, enthusiasm and over-the-top confidence. What a story.
And even so, they’re not the most unlikely playoff team because that would be the Kansas City Royals, who lost 106 games last year. No team with 106 losses had EVER made the playoffs the following year … and the Royals certainly did not seem a candidate to become the first. But a couple of things happened.
Thing 1: Bobby Witt Jr. became one of the just 22 players in baseball history to have a nine WAR season before he even turned 25 years old. I have to be at my event in about 33 minutes, but I think I still have time to list off the other 21 because, you know, it’s quite the list:
Mookie Betts
Ty Cobb (twice)
Eddie Collins (twice)
Jimmie Foxx
Lou Gehrig
Bryce Harper
Gunnar Henderson
Rogers Hornsby (twice)
Reggie Jackson
Shoeless Joe Jackson (twice)
Mickey Mantle (twice)
Willie Mays (twice)
Stan Musial
Cal Ripken Jr.
Babe Ruth
Mike Schmidt
Tris Speaker
Mike Trout (3 times)
Alex Rodriguez (twice)
Arky Vaughan
Ted Williams (twice)
There ain’t no stinkers on that list.
Thing 2, as we have written about pretty often here, the Royals went against the tide and TRIED TO WIN this year. They spent money, brought in free agents, signed Witt long-term, made deals at the trade deadline, basically acted like last year’s disastrous season didn’t even happen. The Royals making the playoffs makes me so happy for so many reasons — for the town, for the players, for my friend J.J. Picollo, for the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (which always does better when the Royals are playing well).
But perhaps the biggest reason their playoff season makes me so happy is that they went for it when perhaps no other team in baseball would have. It’s so good to see a team rewarded for trying.
Finally, the Tigers’ victory to clinch a playoff spot came against the hapless Chicago White Sox, who lost their record-setting 121st game. What a season. I’ll probably do a deeper dive on it when the season ends, but I do want to show you something awesome:
Cleveland Guardians: 92-68 overall. 8-5 vs. the White Sox.
Detroit Tigers: 86-74 overall, 10-1 vs. the White Sox
Kansas City Royals: 85-75 overall, 12-1 vs. the White Sox
Minnesota Twins: 82-78 overall, 12-1 vs. the White Sox
The Chicago White Sox singlehandedly propped up perhaps the two best stories in baseball. The Guardians rolled in the division even though they actually underperformed against Chicago, but the Tigers would basically be a .500 team without the Sox, the Royals would be LESS than a .500 team without the Sox and the Twins would be downright lousy without the Sox. This whole wildcard race in the American League Central was brought to you by the Chicago White Sox. Tigers and Royals fans should send champagne to the South Side.
This meme about the White Sox being the reason is simplistic and completely wrong. These teams played 6.5 more games on average against the White Sox than the other teams or contenders. If they had played 6.5 less, but then 6.5 more against the Angels, (based on their winning percentages against each team) they would have won, collectively 3.54 less games, which is 0.89 wins per team, over the course of a season. There is not another team within a win of the wild card teams. They have the exact same record against the Blue Jays as they do the Angels, so those same numbers work there.
Perhaps, instead, you should blame the rest of the division for the White Sox being the worst team in modern history. The White Sox have a .160 inning percentage inside their division, and a .313 winning percentage against the rest of the AL. That is almost double the win rate outside the division and it will be more than double if they lose both of their remaining games to the Tigers. A .313 winning percentage is really bad, but it sure as heck ain't historically bad. The historically bad part comes from being in a tough division.
The 4 contending teams also have a collective .552 winning percentage against the rest of the AL.
When you mention meme numbers without any understanding of the context, it is a bad look.
"Tigers and Royals fans should send champagne to the South Side.."
Don"t bother...I don't think we'd know what to do with it. We'd either store it (and forget we had it) in our pantry or use it on our pancakes.