Inside Guardians’ historic AL Central comeback

For the 2025 Cleveland Guardians, it came on July 6, when they were one strike away from beating the division-leading Tigers and snapping a nine-game losing streak, only to somehow allow seven runs across the ninth and 10th innings to lose, 7-2, and fall a season-high 15 1/2 games back of Detroit in the American League Central standings.
With their thrilling, 5-2 comeback win over reigning Cy Young winner Tarik Skubal and the Tigers on Tuesday night at Progressive Field — amid a stunning 17-5 September surge — the Guardians have officially filled that 15 1/2-game hole, tying the Tigers atop the division. If Cleveland, which now holds the tiebreaker over Detroit, can finish the job, it will break the record set by the 1914 “Miracle” Boston Braves (15 games) for the largest deficit overcome by a league or division champion in a season.
This month alone, the Guardians were 10 1/2 games back of the Tigers going into Sept. 1 and 11 back entering play on Sept. 5. The highest deficit surmounted just within September by an eventual league or division champ came when the Cardinals were 8 1/2 back but took advantage of the Phillies’ “Phold” to win the NL East back in 1964.
The Guardians’ story, meanwhile, is still being written. They have two left against the Tigers on Wednesday and Thursday, then wrap the season at home against the Rangers with three this weekend.
Already, though, the Guards — behind their sensational superstar José Ramírez (who might be an AL MVP favorite if the voting were conducted by financial analysts instead of sportswriters), fantastic offensive finishes for catcher Bo Naylor and recently promoted rookie C.J. Kayfus and a six-man rotation experiment that has yielded ridiculously good results — have etched not only themselves but also this 2025 season into its own beautifully bizarre place in baseball history.
The AL Central now joins each of the other five divisions in having a first-place club squander a lead of 5 1/2 games or more within a season.
According to the Elias Sports Bureau, that had never happened in any of the previous years of the six-division (aka Wild Card) era, which began in 1994.
Detroit is now feeling the pain of the Yankees (eight games) in the AL East, Mets (5 1/2) in the NL East, Cubs (6 1/2) in the NL Central and Astros (seven games) in the AL West. They can only hope to wind up like the Dodgers, who coughed up a nine-game lead to the Padres in the NL West but are nevertheless closing in on a division crown.
The various Wild Card formats naturally lend themselves to late-season lunacy. The more you muddy the waters and lower the bar for October entry, the more you set the stage for September surprises.
Even at that aforementioned July 6 juncture, the Guardians’ FanGraphs-calculated odds of reaching the playoffs were at least a lowly-but-not-infinitesimal 5.6%. Their AL Central odds, on the other hand, were just 0.2%.
No, wait, sorry, that was the motto instilled in the 1914 Braves by their manager George Stallings, who was the son of a Confederate officer (the South didn’t win that one) and known as a hot-tempered taskmaster.
Stallings was also something of a baseball genius. He rallied his Deadball-Era team back from the dead with his inventive use of platoons that eked that miraculous result out of a lineup that, despite the presence of future Hall of Famers Johnny Evers and Rabbit Maranville in the middle infield, was largely made up of the rank-and-file.
“We had to stay within the law,” Maranville once said, “keep out of jail, and be ready to play.”
The story of the 2025 Guardians is made all the more astonishing by two of the club’s key pitchers being investigated for possibly running afoul of baseball law, with the great closer Emmanuel Clase and the up-and-coming starter Luis Ortiz both placed on non-disciplinary paid leave midseason, while MLB continues an investigation involving sports gambling.
And though some might dispute the phrase “summer seller” with regard to these Guardians, given that they did not pull the trigger on any trade proposals involving All-Star outfielder Steven Kwan, the club did deal its most accomplished pitcher, Shane Bieber (who, to that point, was still working his way back from Tommy John and had not yet thrown a pitch in the big leagues this season), to the contending Blue Jays for salary relief and a prospect piece.
Going into September, if you had been told this team — with a run differential deep in the red and a team OPS tied with the Pirates for the bottom of the barrel in MLB — would be a contender not just for a division title but possibly for a bye in the Wild Card Series round, you wouldn’t buy that, either.
(Fun fact: The Guardians are trying to join the 1951 New York Giants, 1982 Braves and 2017 Dodgers as the only teams to reach the postseason despite a 10-game losing streak at any point in the year.)
Fans get understandably frustrated with the club’s struggle to develop power hitters and an unwillingness to pay for that power externally. Still, since 2013, this franchise has the third-best winning percentage in all of MLB — behind only the Dodgers and Yankees — and has the potential to reach the playoffs for the eighth time in that 13-season span.
Like the 1914 Braves, the Guardians construct their lineups around the concept of the platoon advantage and rely on a pitching-and-defense foundation. And just as the 1914 Braves took advantage of the New York Giants squandering their giant edge, the Guardians have gotten a lot of help from Detroit’s dizzying decline, which is, of course, a whole ‘nother story.