Overlooked AL Central gets its revenge by putting 3 teams in Division Series

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The cruel joke before the season was that someone would win the AL Central because someone had to win the AL Central.

They were five teams with modest payrolls and meager expectations, each of them short on talent and long on hope.

Well, it turns out the path to the World Series — at least in the American League — is going right through the division.

What was widely regarded as the weakest in baseball in April has become a postseason heavyweight in October. Three of its teams are still alive in the divisional round, with the AL Central champion Guardians set to face the Tigers, fresh off a wild-card sweep of the AL West champion Astros, and the Royals going to New York to face the Yankees after sweeping the Orioles.

“Playing in the division all year, we saw the caliber of all the teams," Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. "Everybody plays each other very tough, plays very good baseball. And so it's really cool. It's great that we have three of our divisional teams.”

It's not just that it's three teams from one division, though.

It's three teams from this particular division.

Each finished below .500 last season. In the Royals' case, they matched a franchise record for ineptitude by losing 106 games — a full 50 more than they won. The Tigers won just 78 games and the Guardians won 76, which means the three teams that joined the AL East champion Yankees in the divisional round were a combined 66 games below .500 last year.

Who saw that coming?

Certainly not the sportsbooks. The Tigers and Guardians carried 66/1 odds to win the World Series on opening day, according to BetMGM, while the Royals were a 200-to-1 long shot — meaning if you were stupid enough, or prescient enough, to bet $100 on them back in March, you might be holding a ticket worth $20,000 in a few weeks.

“We've just got to take things one day at a time,” said Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., who might have been a runaway MVP pick had the Yankees' Aaron Judge not had a record-setting season of his own. “One step at a time, like we've been doing.”

It's not just that the AL Central was bad last year, either. It's that despite opening their pocketbooks in the offseason, with the Royals alone spending more than $100 million on free agents, they were still fielding clubs with modest payrolls.

The latest figures heading into Game 1 on Saturday night put the Royals at $117 million, the Guardians at $109 million and the Tigers at $101 million, each in the bottom third of the league. In fact, all of them combined barely surpasses the $311 million tab for the mighty Yankees.

“We believe in each other. We believe in this team,” said Tigers second baseman Colt Keith, whose club was scuffling along at just 55-63 on Aug. 10 before a 31-13 tear got the franchise into the playoffs for the first time since 2014. “We knew it wasn’t going to be easy. It was going to take extreme focus from every single person. But gosh, we did it.”

While the Tigers were soaring, the Royals were beginning to flounder, going on two long losing streaks after first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino broke his thumb. But led by one of the best pitching staffs in the game, second-year manager Matt Quatraro's team managed to hold it all together, squeaking into the playoffs for the first time since winning the 2015 World Series.

Pasquantino was back, too, coming off the injured list this week to help beat the Orioles in consecutive games.

The Royals and Tigers, who both finished well behind Cleveland, squeezed into the playoffs at the expense of another team from the division: Minnesota. Last year's AL Central champion was in contention until the final week of the regular season.

The last-place team in the Central was the Chicago White Sox, who broke the majors' modern record for most losses by finishing with a 41-121 record.

“(The Twins) had the highest projected win total for the division, and they were in it all year, too,” Cleveland catcher Austin Hedges pointed out. "You had four teams flirting with the playoffs, and three in the (divisional round) shows it's the best division in baseball right now.”

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AP Sports Writers Tom Withers in Cleveland and Ronald Blum in New York and AP freelancer Jeremy Rakes in Houston contributed.

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Dave Skretta, The Associated Press