Before the season many outlets and sports writers were of the opinion that the American League Central would be the toughest league in baseball and the division has certainly lived up to the hype so far. One reason is that each team is pretty talented and spending time beating each other up as Leyland put it earlier in the season when discussing the Royals:

“They’re going to be good,” Leyland said, “and that’s going to be good for the division. The more good teams you’ve got in the division, the more you beat each other up, and the less you give somebody a chance of running away [with the title].”

Here is a breakout of the race through April which you can see how close the race has been so far. It’s early so it will be close but to put a bit more perspective the only division that is currently closer than the AL Central is the National League West where the top 3 are within 2.5 games.

Each team has also been beating each other up and looking at only games where both teams are in the Central division you can see as such.

It appears it will be important as ever to win game within the AL Central as it could be ‘he who wins the most AL Central match ups wins the division’. On that note, the Tigers will be facing Central foes this weekend (in KC) and next weekend (in Minnesota.) Good thing thier hitting is coming around: first nine games: .237 second nine games .232 third nine games .297. That’s quite a turnaround.