Summer again has been kind to a young, underperforming Detroit Tigers team, but a successful June and July still leaves them in fourth place in the AL Central, six games back of the uninspiring (56-54) Cleveland Guardians. It also appears likely that their best player has played his last game in their uniform. Still, the cyborgs at FanGraphs say Detroit has a one-in-four shot of making the playoffs.

That’s more life than I assumed they had at this point (and a far cry from their early season peak at 77.2% on March 26), but it isn’t great, especially with two months to go and so many teams to leap to clinch the division or claim a wild card.

On the other hand, I feel pretty good about the Dodgers’ chances of winning the World Series again this year, and the site says that’s as likely to happen as the Tigers making the playoffs

The Tigers are the Dodgers of this playoff push? I guess I can live with that. Is it enough reason to keep Tarik Skubal in town? Odds I trust a Chris Ilitch-controlled team to make the right personnel move unfortunately are closer to Detroit’s World Series odds. Stay tuned.

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