Opinion: Guardians surge and Tigers’s collapse is baseball’s biggest story in 2025

One of the biggest stories in the last couple of months in the 2025 Major League Baseball regular season was the play of the Cleveland Guardians, and the fact that the Detroit Tigers simply collapsed. The fact that the Tigers and Guardians are playing on Thursday in game three of the American League Wildcard Series just adds to the high level of intrigue among these American League Central Division rivals.

Back on July 8, the Tigers had a record of 59 wins and 34 losses for a winning percentage of .634. They were leading the Minnesota Twins and Kansas City Royals by 14 games each and the Guardians by 15.5 games. Detroit was also the best team in baseball. However, some how and some way, the Guardians came all the way back after being at 42 wins and 48 losses for a winning percentage of .467 on July 8. In the last 11 weeks of the regular season, the Tigers were only at 28 wins and 41 losses, while the Guardians were at 46 wins and 26 losses. The Guardians were 16.5 games better than the Tigers and delivered the biggest divisional comeback in MLB history.

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The previous biggest comeback came in 1914. The Boston Braves were 15 games back of the New York Giants before they won 35 of their last 37 games, and beat the Giants by 10.5 games.

One reason for the Cleveland turn around was great pitching. They had a team earned run average of 2.61 in September. They were the only team in the Majors with an ERA under three.

In the AL wildcard series in game one, great pitching was not enough, as the Guardians lost 2-1. In game two on Wednesday, the Guardians’s offense came alive. They scored six runs thanks to a three-run home run by Canadian catcher Bo Naylor in a 6-1 Cleveland win.

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