20%

Chris De Luca leads off his game recap (tonight’s 13-1 loss to the Twins on the heels of yesterday’s 7-1 victory) in the Sun-Times with the following observation of the AL Central:

There are two ways you can look at the surprising numbers summing up the American League Central Division. Either this was the most overhyped division in baseball or these teams are so good, they are simply beating up on each other too much.

On May 7, it’s tough to fathom that just one team in the division is in the black as far as wins and losses go. Even more surprising is the fact that it’s 17-15 Minnesota. The Sox struggling to stay afloat at 15-17 was expected from the baseball intelligentsia, though the way they’ve gone about it has turned heads (great pitching, but where’s the offense?) Cleveland at 16-17 and Detroit lagging in dead last at 15-20 would make sense if they’d spent most of their schedule playing each other.

Here’s the real test: right now, 3.5 games separate first from last place in the AL Central, easily the closest margin between hero and zero among baseball’s six divisions (the AL East is next, with 5 games dividing the front-running Red Sox from the cellar-dwelling Orioles). Are these five teams bunched together as not-so-great, ala the 2006 NL Central, or could this be shaping up as a repeat of the 2006 AL Central in which three teams won 90 games? Right now we’re only 20% of the way home in 2008, so a ton of stuff can still happen.

Still, while Gavin Floyd delivered a much-needed “pick-me-up” with last night’s performance, I think Mark Buehrle going to town on the White Sox dugout speaks to the dire straits the Sox are in. Walks are fine, pitching’s been good if not stellar almost every night out, but if a team can’t collectively get over .230, it’s going to be another very long summer no matter how mediocre the division potentially turns out to be.