Taking A Gander At The AL Central

That’s pretty typical of not just the White Sox, but all Chicago sports franchises.

As we hit the homestretch, we find a tight AL Central race. That in itself is not surprising, but the teams involved are. What was thought to be a race between the injury riddled Indians and the underachieving Tigers has developed into one between the White Sox and Twins. Currently the White Sox sit 1 game ahead of perhaps the most overachieving team in baseball this year.

Offensively the Twins and Sox are fairly even, although they go about it in different ways. The Sox have scored 17 more runs than the Twins this year, but have a .458 team slugging percent to the Twins .410 mark. The pale hose also have 103 more homers than the Twins have hit. In fact, the gap between the two is higher than the Twins total (95). The Twins have made great strides with the bats lately however, especially when they inserted Denard Span, whose bat is 15 runs above average in the leadoff spot, for Carlos Gomez (-14 BRAA). Ironically enough, both players have very similar WARPs, showing how valuable Gomez’s glove is in centerfield. The Twins also have some OBP depth at the bottom of the order, as Nick Punto is currently having the best offensive season of his career. The White Sox, as I mentioned earlier, have the tremendous power edge, led by Carlos Quentin, who probably will get a lot of support for MVP, and Jermaine Dye, who has 32 homeruns and is currently enjoying somewhat of a rennaisance year.

Defensively the White Sox have the edge, at least going by the raw numbers: Chicago is 10th in the majors in defensive efficiency, while the Twins are 22nd. However, let me add one caveat. The Twins’ outfield defense is very good. Carlos Gomez and Denard Span are two of the better outfielders in baseball, which is lucky for the Twins because all of their starters are fly-ball pitchers. Nick Blackburn is the only one who could be considered a ground ball pitcher, and even he is barely over a 1 GO/AO. Overall, I think this narrows the gap considerably between the Twins and White Sox.

The teams’ pitching is both in the same situation: good starting pitching, but awful bullpens. The addidtion of Eddie Guardado should help the Twins, but they need Matt Guerrier and Jesse Crain to revert to their old forms.

Both of these teams seem fairly even, and over the course of one month there might as well be no difference between the two, but I will say that unless the Twins offense gets going again, the White Sox will take the division.