The Chicago White Sox own a 63-61 record, good for 2^nd place, and lead the AL Central with a +14 run differential. Detroit is 65-59; good for 1^st place, but have a +10 run differential. That says more about the AL Central than it does about the White Sox or Tigers. Saying the AL Central is the weakest division baseball is a rather easy argument to make, but I’m not here to make that argument.

I want to know why neither Detroit nor Chicago has run away with this division. My original guess was that they were scoring enough runs, but their pitching has been the Achilles’ heel. In fact, Chicago and Detroit are 7^th and 8^th in the majors in team ERA. Not only that, but they are 2^nd and 3^rd respectively among AL teams! Raise your hand if you knew that both the White Sox and Tigers are top 3 in team ERA. Ok, so as a whole, pitching has been a wash.

How bout the bats? Well both teams are major league average. The White Sox at 15^th in MLB in runs scored, the Tigers at 17^th. Chicago has scored 10 more runs this season in one more game. Both teams are relatively healthy on offense now and aren’t expecting any new major bats to contribute down the stretch, so offense isn’t too conclusive, in terms of runs scored.

Ok, how do they compare on team defense? The Tigers, as a team, have a UZR/150 of 5.9, good for 4^th in MLB. (For more information about UZR, UZR/150 or defensive metrics visit fangraphs.com). The White Sox have a -1.9 UZR, which makes them 20^th in MLB. Aha! Defensively the Tigers have a significant advantage over the White Sox, but haven’t been able to pull away in the AL Central.

Tying this back into team ERA, the White Sox are 2^nd in AL in team ERA, but 20^th in defense. In fact, no team in the top 12 in team ERA has a worse defense than the White Sox, according to UZR/150. There is a significant amount of baseball material out there, Bill James, Rob Neyer, etc, that attribute what people perceive as good pitching stats more so to team defense than to the individual pitchers. In that case, this White Sox defense/pitching combination is just weird.

My conclusions are the following, Detroit hasn’t run away with it, because they haven’t scored enough runs, considering their defense and pitching have been strong, and the White Sox aren’t in 1^st place by 10 games because of their defensive woes. Whoever does better in their respective weakness, wins this division.

Finally, some food for thought; the White Sox  added a defensive specialist in Alex Rios 13 days ago and the Tigers traded for left handed bat Aubrey Huff less than a week ago.