Will the Tigers Make the Playoffs?

All year we have been encouraging people not to worry, as the season is one that is long. The thought is the same for today. Here are a couple of items to remember as we come down the stretch. 

1.) The regular season lasts into October this year. In fact, the Tigers have a final three game series in Kansas City that will be fully played in October. With this in mind, there are still 36 games left in this season. That is still almost a quarter of the season. 22.22%.

2.) The scoreboard watching has certainly picked up. Every night we find ourselves checking to see if the White Sox won. Their season continues to come together with unexpected rigor. Bottom line... They keep winning, but we don't think that their pace will continue. All of their pieces have fallen into place this year and this will not sustain through the final quarter of the season. 

3.) As stated in an earlier post, with the parallel schedules that the White Sox and Tigers have, whether or not the Tigers make the playoffs will depend on those seven games. If either team wins 5 of 7, then that team will win the Central. The other team will have to scramble to get one of those wildcard bids.

2012 AL Central Analysis and Predictions (Part 3)

After taking an in depth look at the Central, the bottom line is this... The AL Central is the worst division in baseball, in competition with the NL Central, and only has one legitimate contender within its ranks. The Detroit Tigers will win at least 100 games and will contend for the world series in 2011. The Kansas City Royals will finally break through and take a step toward contending for the wild card and be 10 games better than they were last year. (As long as the injury bug stays far away.)  The rest of the AL Central will be both worse and bad. Really bad. The White Sox, Twins, and Indians will be out of the race by the All Star break and will begin rebuilding when this reality lands heavy on their front office come July. With no major moves in the off season, and question marks across all three rosters, the Indians, Twins and White Sox will need divine intervention to help cross the .500 mark. Not even an act of God could get them in a playoff race come September. 

Here is how we see the Central finishing.