Welcome to The Pregame Lineup, a weekday newsletter that gets you up to speed on everything you need to know for today’s games, while catching you up on fun and interesting stories you might have missed. Thanks for being here.

There has been quite a lot of talk about the fiercely competitive NL West so far this season, and for good reason. It currently features four teams above .500, all separated by 5 1/2 games, and three of the four would make the playoffs if they started today. But there is another division, also with four teams with winning records, also all separated by 5 1/2 games, but all four of those clubs would be October bound. And that division is the AL Central.

It’s probably not something you thought you’d see at any point this year, but it’s worth a look at how this division became one of the most competitive in baseball seemingly overnight. 

Let’s start with the first-place Tigers, who clawed their way into the 2024 postseason with their frantic late run and have proven that Motown magic is no mere illusion. Since July 1 of last season, when they were 38-46 and 15 games back in the division, Detroit has gone 77-45 (.631), the second-best win percentage in MLB in that span after the Padres (.638). They are coming off a sweep of the Red Sox, a team our experts expected to contend for the playoffs, that featured consecutive walk-off wins. One of those came courtesy of Javier Báez, whose career renaissance has been one of the most pleasant surprises in the game. 

While last year was all about “pitching chaos,” the Tigers can now feel at ease with a starting rotation that has the third-best ERA (3.49) in the AL and the second-most strikeouts (245). A lot of that has to do with their ace Tarik Skubal, who last night issued his first walk since April 20, a span of three starts in which he struck out 31 batters. That’s the kind of stuff that’ll make you a frontrunner to repeat as the Cy Young winner. 

The team that is first in both of those pitching categories mentioned above? That’d be the Royals, who got off to a slow start but have come on strong of late thanks to their rotation and superstar shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., who had a 22-game hitting streak that coincided with Kansas City surging back to relevance. 

Speaking of streaks, the Twins just wrapped up their MLB-best 11th straight victory to get to four games over .500, though there was a collective holding of breath for Minnesota fans when Byron Buxton and Carlos Correa collided in center field and both exited the game this afternoon. As always, the health of those two up the middle dictates how far this team can go.

We’ve come all this way without even mentioning the reigning AL Central champion Guardians – currently in second place – who continue quietly going about their business with little flair and a workmanlike star player in José Ramírez who has turned the term “underrated” into a cliché.

Will all four of these clubs actually end up representing the AL in the postseason? It’ll be a tall task, but remember that this division did send three teams to October just last year. And nobody believed it then either.

-- Scott Chiusano

If you missed last night’s alley-oop home run robbery, we suggest you check it out here. But the bizarre, beautiful play got us bouncing some ideas around, like has there ever been another recorded 9-8 putout? A call to the Elias Sports Bureau revealed that, in fact, there has been, and you just saw it in the GIF above. That carom off the noggin of Twins right fielder Mike Ryan that was corralled by center fielder Dustan Mohr in 2003 is the most recent instance. When recalling old heady plays, it’s hard not to bring up the cranium-aided clout off Jose Canseco back in 1993. “You’ve got to laugh at something like that,” the man who was credited with that homer, Carlos Martinez, said at the time. 

• Astros @ Rangers (8:05 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): On this day 11 years ago, Jacob deGrom made his big league debut with seven one-run innings against the Yankees. Tonight he goes against the Astros with a lot less hair and a lot more strikeouts to his name. Houston’s 26-year-old right-hander Hunter Brown is on the other side with his sights set on an MLB-best seventh victory, making this an enticing pitchers’ duel between a decorated veteran and an emerging ace. 

• Athletics @ Dodgers (10:10 p.m. ET, MLB.TV): Highly touted backstop Dalton Rushing, the No. 15 overall prospect in baseball, makes his debut for the Dodgers tonight. He’s their reigning Minor League player of the year and has mashed at every level, reason enough for L.A. to bring him up even as a backup to Will Smith. Fun fact, both Rushing and Smith were drafted by the Dodgers out of Louisville, six years apart. 

A raccoon was caught on camera roaming the Citi Field stands last night, and it surprisingly didn’t cause much of a stir. This might have been just another occurrence to add to the list of animals showing up at baseball games, except it took on added resonance because of a mini-Mets controversy from a few years ago. You might recall when Francisco Lindor and Jeff McNeil disappeared into the tunnel in the middle of a game, then proceeded to spin a yarn in a postgame press conference about having seen an animal and arguing over whether it was a rat or a raccoon. At the time it seemed like an interesting way to smooth over a potential altercation, but now it makes you wonder: Maybe there really was a raccoon! Time to reopen this cold case.   

For all the obscure stats whizzes out there, this one’s for you. See how well you can compare players and their stats before the timer runs out. Three strikes and you’re out! Play free >>

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