Take a look at the MLB standings in any newspaper today. The numbers you'll find, especially in the streak and last 10 games columns of the page seem to have been compiled by someone quite dyslexic.
The Detroit Tigers, baseball's surprise best team at 82-49, have dropped seven of their last 10 games (as of this writing). The reigning champs from Chicago are only 4-6 and have fallen out of their wildcard spot with surging Minnesota finally overtaking them. The mighty Yankees have dropped four of their last six on their latest West Coast road trip. Yet it is their rivals, the Red Sox, who have been the most fearless freefallers, dropping nine of their last 11 contests.
Incredibly, most of baseball's American League powers seem quite content in giving each other a good head-start going into the final home stretch in September. You may ask, who is taking all these wins away from such powerful teams? The answer provides a list of teams who have little more than pride (and, well, contracts) to play for.
Over that same stretch, the Cleveland Indians have gone 7-3 in that stretch, as have the Orioles. Neither team can even see .500 with a periscope if it could zoom into next week. Seattle has just taken five out of six against the Yankees and Red Sox, delivering Boston's their second sweep in three series. Perhaps the only good team actually having a good week is the Angels, also winners of seven out of their last 10. The only problem with that is that L.A.'s new half-team is still 5½ games behind Oakland for the AL West lead.
Some of this can be explained, some of it must be chalked up to the random quirks of a 162-game season played out in three- and four-game series by five-man pitching rotations. Some funny streaks can compile. (Some of you may be looking for me to explain here how the weaker teams have managed to rise up and win so many games. I apologize to those, but such teams, with the possible exception of the Angels, who are still very much alive, will be ripped clean from the baseball landscape in a month. I know I wouldn't really feel much like reading much in-depth analysis of out-of-contention teams with losing teams in late August unless I was a fan of said team.)
Perhaps this trend is a mere extension of the shockwaves from the most memorable event out of all these winning teams that lose. It was a week ago that the Yankees went into Fenway and socked around the offensive-minded Red Sox for five surreal contests. For one endless weekend, Derek Jeter out-clutched Big Papi's home runs with dinky opposite field singles, two of which proved to be game-deciding slaps.
Boston was thus exposed as having anemic starting pitching and middle-relief that more than vaguely resembled manure. Their offense was basically limited to two players, and you know who they are. Yet the Yankees have often had those same accusations leveled at their hurlers over different stretches of the season.
Quality relief pitching is, by design, rare and fleeting, just ask the White Sox, whose same relievers that won them the championship have, much like milk with an expiration date of '05, gone sour. Mark Buerhle and Jon Garland appear to have been little more than one-year wonders rather than rising stars. Yet due recently to the emergence of Jermaine Dye in recent weeks, the White Sox are still very much a threat, and indeed they are only a ½ game out of the wildcard spot.
And what of Detroit, baseball's underdog darlings? They have found a winning formula for the first four months, but they are still young pups. Rising stars like Mark Verlander and Curtis Granderson along with the players and coaches around them are working with uncharted talent. Little is known about their ability to keep their poise down the stretch or remain consistent over a long, grueling season. This idea that many critics posed has finally caught up to them.
Before the Tigers' 3-7 stretch, they had another streak of five straight losses in mid-August. The White Sox, despite having problems of their own now, played a large part in both of those streaks, winning five of six from the Tigers and gaining valuable ground in the process.
Now the Tigers are in for a fight for home-field advantage, and maybe more. Previously unchallenged, they only have a four-game lead on the Yankees for best record in the American League, with a three-game series at Yankee Stadium to beginning Tuesday. Minnesota is five games back and Chicago 5½, so certainly if the Yankees manage to catch them, they will be brought back to the pack, and perhaps it may be the Tigers that get fed to the lions.
The question remains, though, who will strike that blow? If this is a five-team race for those three spots (AL East, AL Central, and wildcard), it seems that all contestants in the mix are stumbling on top of one another with their shoelaces tied together. If this trend continues, it may in fact be the surging Twins who take the Central.
Minnesota is a team that has not struggled recently, have potential batting champion Joe Mauer anchoring their lineup and Francisco Liriano, the second half of Minnesota's twin killers on the mound, on reserve to return soon. Out of the conventional powerhouse AL teams and the way they have been currently playing, who is currently capable of stopping such a team with a healthy Liriano?
If one thing is certain in the AL, it's that Robin Hood would have loved these past few weeks.
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