You just knew that winning a division title wasn’t going to be easy, right?

Over the past week, the Detroit Tigers saw their American League Central lead dwindle to as few as five games over the red-hot Cleveland Guardians following a 3-3 homestand that featured the Tigers dropping two of three from the AAAA Minnesota Twins before taking two of three over the weekend from the Los Angeles Angels.

For now, we are going to put aside the race for the best record in all of Major League Baseball as the Milwaukee Brewers are currently five game better than the Tigers in the win column, so let’s primarily focus on how the A.L. Central standings look going into another week.

By the way, did we mention that the Tigers and Guardians play each other six more times in September?

AMERICAN LEAGUE CENTRAL STANDINGS
DETROIT TIGERS – 68-51
Cleveland Guardians – 61-56 (6 GB)
Kansas City Royals – 58-60 (9.5 GB)
Minnesota Twins – 56-61 (11 GB)
Chicago White Sox – 43-75 (24.5 GB)

As for who stood out last week, Kerry Carpenter has been money since returning from the injured list:

“Tork” has been better swinging the bat lately:

Matt Vierling (finally) had his big moment this season….before going back on the injured list recently:

We think that Riley Greene might be back:

Detroit takes to the road this week to square off against the bottom two teams in the American League Central for seven games in seven days:

• August 11-13th at Chicago White Sox (Rate Field)
• August 14-17th at Minnesota Twins (Target Field)