"Even peripheral attention is finite, and you would have been forgiven, on or about the morning of July 9, for tucking away the AL Central in your mental "pay no mind" file. On that date, the Detroit Tigers were incandescent and had carved out a seemingly intractable lead in the division. They were 14 games up on their closest challengers, and 15.5 up on the Cleveland Guardians, who were not even in the conversation."
"By the morning of Sept. 10, the Guardians were still becalmed, but the Tigers had cooled. The lead was 9.5 games, still sizable, still safe-if in declaring a divisional lead safe you relied on things like "mathematical probability" ( Fangraphs had Detroit's chances of winning the division at 99.9 percent) and "historical performance" (the largest-ever comeback/collapse in the divisional era of MLB is the Yankees reeling in the Red Sox after trailing by 14 games on July 19, 1978)."
On July 9 Detroit held a 14-game lead in the AL Central and sat 15.5 games ahead of Cleveland. By September 10 the lead had fallen to 9.5 games despite high probability models and historical precedent favoring Detroit. Fangraphs listed Detroit's chances of winning the division at 99.9 percent at one point. By mid-September the lead had dwindled to one game. A bullpen collapse against the eliminated Atlanta Braves accelerated the decline. Detroit led 5-3 through seven innings, but Atlanta rallied in the ninth as rookie Nacho Alvarez Jr. hit his first two major-league home runs and tied the game; Jurickson Profar delivered the go-ahead RBI. The turnaround has been abrupt and painful for Detroit.
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