The Cleveland Guardians are in first place in the AL Central and fans should get used to it

The Cleveland Guardians will likely need a fruit basket for the Los Angeles Dodgers.

The Cleveland Guardians came into Tuesday’s game against the Detroit Tigers just one game behind the Minnesota Twins for the AL Central Title. The Twins, the former top dogs in the division, were one-game ahead and facing off with the Dodgers in Los Angeles.

If the Guardians were going to overtake the Twins without going head to head, this was the perfect opportunity to do just that.

The Guards were throwing Shane Bieber against the Tigers, while the Twins were throwing Joe Ryan against the Dodgers. Not even Jack Ryan would have been able to starve off the Dodgers from them taking the Twins down.

Despite missing over a month, Oscar Gonzalez is hitting .375 since returning and that was a huge help for the Guardians in their win over the Tigers on Tuesday. The series isn’t over, with two more games ahead of them before moving on to Toronto.

Unfortunately, the whole team is going, as James Karinchakhas still refused to get vaccinated, making him unable to play this weekend. Should the Guardians make the playoffs and square off with the Blue Jays, a decision on his playoff availability will need to be made.

The Cleveland Guardians have a great chance of securing first place for good

Following this set of series, the Guardians and Twins play a lot of the same teams, as they’ll be mostly against divisional games. Yet, each team has four non-divisional teams to worry about the most.

Cleveland has Toronto, San Diego, Baltimore, and the Mariners to worry about, while the Twins have San Francisco, Houston, Baltimore, and New York.

The Guards clearly have an easier schedule going forward. Making that five-game series the two play extremely pivotal for control of the division.