Breaking down AL Central: Guardians run, Tigers collapse

• David SchoenfieldSep 22, 2025, 07:00 AM ET

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  • Covers MLB for ESPN.com
  • Former deputy editor of Page 2
  • Been with ESPN.com since 1995

If the Detroit Tigers and Cleveland Guardians had been going toe-to-toe for the lead in American League Central all season long, this would be viewed as a fun division race between two scrappy-if-flawed teams.

But timing is everything — and that’s not how each team’s wins and losses unfolded.

Instead, we get the much more intriguing storyline of the Guardians surging to a miracle comeback to make the playoffs and the Tigers trying to avoid an epic collapse.

In early July, after the Tigers swept the Guardians, Cleveland trailed Detroit by 15½ games in the division race. No team has ever won a division title or pennant after a deficit that large. On July 8, Cleveland’s odds of winning the division were a minuscule 0.1%, according to FanGraphs. At the time, the Tigers were 59-34, the best record in the majors.

The Guardians clawed back to 6½ games out of first place in mid-August but then lost nine of 10, including three straight shutouts at the end of that stretch, to fall 12½ games out of first place on Aug. 25. Their division chances didn’t even register: 0.0% via the odds at FanGraphs; their overall playoff odds were a mere 3.0%.

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But 0.0% must not mean zero, because as we begin the final week of the 2025 regular season, the Guardians have chased down the Tigers, trailing by only one game — with the two teams meeting in Cleveland for a three-game series starting Tuesday. Though the Guardians’ 10-game winning streak ended Sunday, they have gone 20-6 since their odds were not-quite-zero. The Tigers lost their sixth in a row Sunday and are 7-16 since Cleveland’s playoff odds were not-quite-zero.

The panic is real in Detroit.

“It’s hard trying to put into words what’s going on,” manager A.J. Hinch said after his Tigers blew a ninth-inning lead Saturday when the Braves scored the tying and go-ahead runs on two-out singles. “Some big emotional swings, and an absolute gut punch right to the face.”

So, what happened? How did both Cleveland and Detroit end up in this position? And where does this AL Central race potentially fall among the greatest comebacks/collapses in MLB history? Let’s break it all down.

How the Guardians and Tigers got here

What makes this Guardians run so unbelievable is that they aren’t exactly sending Manny Ramirez, Albert Belle and Jim Thome out there. Their lineup has one power-hitting star in Jose Ramirez, who leads the team in most offensive categories, including with 5.6 WAR, and then outside of Steven Kwan, who boasts 3.4 WAR, no other non-pitcher has more than 1.8.

Remember, as well, the Guardians were soft dealers at the trade deadline, trading starter Shane Bieber to Toronto. Their former ace hadn’t yet pitched in 2025 at that point, but he was rehabbing in the minors as he recovered from the Tommy John surgery he had in 2024. Closer Emmanuel Clase had been put on a nondisciplinary paid leave on July 28 and starter Luis Ortiz on July 3 as MLB conducted a sports betting investigation into both players. (The pair remain on leave “until further notice” while the investigation continues.) The Guardians didn’t bother to replace either Bieber or Clase at the deadline, just riding with what they have.

Somehow, they started winning anyway. Since Aug. 1, they have the lowest ERA in the majors and have given up the fewest runs in the AL. They’ve thrown five shutouts in September, including blanking the listless Minnesota Twins in both games of Saturday’s doubleheader, and the bullpen has been lights-out with a 2.64 ERA during this 20-6 stretch.

Manager Stephen Vogt and pitching coach Carl Willis have pulled all the right moves. Logan Allen started the second game of Saturday’s doubleheader, after the team had pushed back his turn in the rotation to have two veteran arms ready for the doubleheader. The decision didn’t sit well with Allen, but he responded with eight scoreless innings and the Guardians would need only three innings of relief work across the two games. Now, the bullpen is in good shape for the Detroit series.

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With no Bieber and no Ortiz, the Guardians turned to rookie southpaw Parker Messick, who might come from the David Wells school of conditioning but pounds the strike zone and is 3-0 with a 2.08 ERA in his six starts, walking only five and giving up only one home run. He got all of this rolling with seven shutout innings on Aug. 26 in his second career start and Cleveland has gone on to win his past three outings as he has given up only four runs.

As always, the key to the success of the Cleveland franchise: It finds and develops pitchers.

The same can’t be said for the Tigers.

With a clear need for rotation help at the deadline to help back up Tarik Skubal, their big acquisition was 41-year-old Charlie Morton. After posting a 10.89 ERA in his first five starts with the Baltimore Orioles, Morton had seemingly found himself and had gone 7-1 with a 3.88 ERA in 11 starts before the Tigers traded for him. It seemed like a reasonable move and he pitched well in three of his first starts with Detroit. But then, as 41-year-old pitchers might be apt to do, he hit a wall: The Tigers lost his next five starts as he gave up 22 runs in 17 innings, leading to them releasing him Saturday.

It’s not all on Morton. Jack Flaherty has won only three of his past 17 starts with a 5.59 ERA. The offense clearly overperformed in the first half as well, with Javier Baez and Zach McKinstry both unlikely All-Stars. Fellow All-Star Riley Greene has hit .218 in the second half and Baez has predictably plummeted to a .205 average, .213 OBP and one home run. Since that hot 59-34 start, the Tigers have gone 26-37. The offensive splits:

Through July 8: .253/.324/.427, 5.0 runs per game
After July 8: .240/.306/.402, 4.4 runs per game

It all leads to these final six games: the three head-to-head games and then Detroit finishing at Boston (one of the teams battling for one an AL wild card) and Cleveland hosting Texas. The Guardians lead the season series over the Tigers 6-4.

Where this race ranks among all-time comebacks/collapses

These are the six races that stand out:

1951 NL pennant: New York Giants/Brooklyn Dodgers

Status: Giants were 13 games back on Aug. 11
How it’s remembered: A Giants comeback and a Dodgers collapse

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The Dodgers didn’t really collapse, going 27-24 the rest of the way while the Giants finished 39-8 to force a three-game tiebreaker series for the pennant, but it’s painted as both a comeback and a collapse since both teams were famous rivals and Bobby Thomson hit the home run to win the pennant. Decades later, we would learn the Giants had installed an elaborate sign-stealing system at the Polo Grounds involving a telescope in center field, a buzzer and a relay system to signal to the batter what pitch was coming.

1964 NL pennant: St. Louis Cardinals/Philadelphia Phillies

Status: Phillies were 6½ games up with 12 to play
How it’s remembered: A Phillies collapse

The Phillies led the Cardinals and Reds by 6½ games, seemingly on their way to their first pennant since 1950 — only to lose 10 in a row. Manager Gene Mauch famously panicked and started Jim Bunning and Chris Short, his two best starters, on two days’ rest, with Bunning getting hammered twice. Philadelphia won its final two games, but it was too late: The Cardinals won the pennant by a game.

1978 AL East: New York Yankees/Boston Red Sox

Status: Yankees were 14 games back on July 19
How it’s remembered: Mostly as a Red Sox collapse

For a long time, this was just another etch in the Curse of the Bambino timeline, another miserable disappointment in Red Sox history. What everyone forgets: The Red Sox had to win their final eight games just to force the one-game playoff for the division title, only to see light-hitting Bucky Dent hit the unlikely home run off Mike Torrez over the Green Monster.

1995 AL West: Seattle Mariners/California Angels

Status: Mariners were 12½ games back on Aug. 20
How it’s remembered: More as a Mariners comeback

This was the first time the Mariners ever made the playoffs, doing so in dramatic fashion with several memorable wins and then beating the Angels in a tiebreaker game. Really though, this one went both ways as the Mariners finished 26-13 while the Angels finished 12-26, a span that included separate nine-game losing streaks. But the Angels did win their final five to get into the tiebreaker game.

2007 NL East: Philadelphia Phillies/New York Mets

Status: Mets were seven games up with 17 to play
How it’s remembered: A Mets collapse

The Mets went 5-12 down the stretch, beginning with three losses to the Phillies at Shea Stadium. In the first game, the Mets lost in 10 innings in front of 53,000 fans. The next afternoon, in front of 55,000 fans, they blew a 3-2 lead in the eighth inning. On Sunday, with another crowd of 50,000-plus, they committed six errors in a 10-6 loss. Tied going into the final day of the season, Tom Glavine gave up seven runs in the top of the first against the Miami Marlins while the Phillies won their game. This is correctly viewed as a Mets collapse.

2011 AL wild card: Tampa Bay Rays/Boston Red Sox

Status: Red Sox were nine games up on Sept. 3
How it’s remembered: A Red Sox collapse

This is the famous beer-and-chicken Red Sox team that lost its playoff spot on the wild final day of the regular season. The Rays rallied from a 7-0 deficit in the eighth inning to beat the Yankees on Dan Johnson’s two-out, pinch-hit home run to tie it in the ninth and Evan Longoria’s walk-off home run in the 12th while the Red Sox blew a ninth-inning lead against the Orioles. The Red Sox finished 5-14 while the Rays went 13-7, so the “Red Sox collapsed” angle feels like the right one.

There are a few others we could have mentioned, including the 1914 Boston Braves, who actually had the largest deficit of any team to be trailing but win a pennant division as they were 15 games back and in last place in the National League on July 4 before going 68-19 the rest of the way to win the pennant by 10½ games.

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The ultimate legacy of this AL Central race will be determined not so much by which team wins the division, but whether the Tigers miss the playoffs entirely. If that does happen, it goes down as an all-time collapse — going from the best record in baseball to not even winning a wild-card spot.

There’s another scenario in which the Tigers lose the division and do win a wild card. That was the scenario back in 2006, when they led the Twins by 12 games on July 15, but Minnesota rallied to win the division on the final day of the regular season. But the Tigers still made the playoffs as a wild card and even advanced to the World Series, so that collapse has been forgotten.

In the end, that’s all that matters at this point for both Cleveland and Detroit: just get in.

But winning the division will feel particularly sweet.

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