2008 mlb season preview: a.l. central

continuing on with our baseball season previews in no particular order, today we preview the american league's central division. click the "mlb season previews" label on the left menu to see other exciting previews.

predicted order of finish:

detroit tigers 95-67
cleveland indians 94-68
chicago white sox 79-83
minnesota twins 75-87
kansas city royals 73-89

the tigers are loaded on offense with new additions miguel cabrera and edgar renteria. i'll be surprised if they don't score over 900 runs this season. their pitching, especially their starters, will struggle somewhat. ordinarily this would cause me to pick against a team but i'll go with my guts here and predict the tigers to barely hold off cleveland to win the division. the indians return basically all of their key players from their 96-win division-winning team last season. if travis hafner returns to his previous form, cleveland's offense will be even stronger. their bullpen is always a slight concern when joe borowski is the closer, and sabathia logged a ton of innings last year and thus may not be as effective this year. i don't have them winning this division but i think the indians will win the wildcard. the twins pitching will struggle this year with the departure of johan santana and because their management is treating francisco liriano's left arm like it's a paper napkin. the twins hitting will struggle because they are forced to rely on guys like lew ford and mike lamb. white sox manager ozzie guillen said he's going to go back to being himself this year and that this will cause the white sox to win a lot, or something like that. while i'm not sure exactly what that statement means, i'm also not sure how they didn't win more last year, as they seem to have adequate pitching and hitting both. however, i think they'll still have the same level of quit in them as last year, leading to a similarly mediocre performance. the royals are still hapless, but GM dayton moore is slowly getting this franchise moving in the right direction. most importantly they have some decent young arms, and with the jose guillen signing in the offseason they're at least trying to attract people to kansas city, as difficult as that no doubt is.