Cleveland Guardians Projected To Lose AL Central Division Title

The Cleveland Guardians have had a stranglehold on the AL Central all year, but one projection has them losing it to the Minnesota Twins.

May 17, 2024; Cleveland, Ohio, USA; Cleveland Guardians second baseman Andres Gimenez (0) slides before being tagged out by Minnesota Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers (27) in the sixth inning at Progressive Field. Mandatory Credit: David Richard-USA TODAY Sports / David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

The Cleveland Guardians have been in firm control of the AL Central all season long, but they are far from a lock to win the division.

Thanks to a 7-11 slide heading into the All-Star break, the Guardians' lead over the Minnesota Twins for first place in the division has shrunk to four-and-a-half games, and Cleveland still has eight games remaining with the Twins before the end of the year.

As a matter of fact, Austin Mock of The Athletic ran some projections for the second half of the campaign, and his statistical model only gives the Guardians a 41.1 percent chance to hold on to their AL Central lead. Meanwhile, he gives Minnesota a 47.1 percent to take home the division crown.

Mock's model creates a projection for every player, which is then turned into a team rating. It then simulates every game the rest of the way and repeats the process 100,000 times to generate a large sample size.

Cleveland was also only given a measly three percent chance of winning the World Series and an 8.8 percent chance to win the American League pennant.

To be brutally honest, you can see why statistical models may not be too kind to the Guardians heading into the stretch run of 2024.

Since starting 36-17, Cleveland has gone a very middling 22-20. Its starting rotation has been an unmitigated disaster, and its offense has been rather pedestrian as a whole.

The Guardians have gotten by largely on the strength of their dynamic bullpen, but it's easy to see a scenario in which that is not sustainable through October.

The good news is that Cleveland still has some time between now and the July 30 MLB trade deadline to address its principle issues.