The AL Central woke up Friday without a leader in the games-back column. The Cleveland Guardians‘ 5-2 win over the Minnesota Twins on Thursday — covered here off the box score — landed the same night Boston finished off a sweep of the Chicago White Sox, and the two results left Cleveland (48-46) and Chicago (47-45) dead even at the top. Zero games separate them; the White Sox keep the nominal lead on winning percentage by a rounding error.
Gavin Williams supplied the push. He worked seven innings, allowed three hits and two runs, struck out 11 and walked one — his first win since June 3 and his 10th of the season, tying Boston’s Sonny Gray for the American League lead. Chase DeLauter, Patrick Bailey and Gabriel Arias all homered, and Cade Smith closed it out. The one walk is the detail worth keeping: on a night Cleveland needed length from its best starter, Williams threw strikes for seven innings and let the defense do its work behind him.
Neither co-leader has earned the perch lately. Both clubs are 4-6 over their last ten, and Chicago limps in on a three-game slide after being swept at home by Boston. The team playing the best baseball in the division is the one that lost Thursday: the Minnesota Twins sit 2.0 back at 46-48 and are 7-3 in their last ten, with Royce Lewis (2-for-4 with a solo homer Thursday) swinging it well. The weekend sets up as a test of who steadies first — Cleveland opens a series in Miami while Chicago hosts the Athletics — and with three teams packed inside two games, the club that simply executes its way through July owns this race.
For fantasy purposes, Williams closed whatever debate remained: 11 strikeouts and one walk against a lineup that had been the division’s hottest makes him a locked-in starter in all formats, and the 10 wins add a floor that his 3.81 ERA undersells. Lewis, coming off a two-hit night with his lone homer of the stretch and hitting in the middle of a rising Twins lineup, remains a strong week-ahead play.
