Best time of the season is here, but not without some heartbreak: The week in baseball

CLEVELAND, Ohio - This is the best time of the year for baseball. The playoff brackets are all but set, the wild card series starts Tuesday followed by the division series, the championship series and the World Series.

The Guardians find themselves right in the middle of the excitement. A team that received little notice during the preseason, has won its 12th AL Central Division title and owns one of the top two seeds to escape the wild-card madness.

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They've done it with a first-year manager in Stephen Vogt, a good bullpen led by Emmanuel Clase and two big-time hitters in the middle of the lineup in Jose Ramirez (.277, 38 HR, 115 RBI) and Jose Naylor (.242, 31, 108). Throw in good defense and aggressive baserunning, and the Guards entered Saturday night's game against Houston with 92 wins despite an on-again, off-again starting rotation.

Overall, it's been a big season for the AL Central, which has been treated like a little brother by both leagues for far too long. The Guardians, Tigers and Kansas City have all qualified for the postseason. The Twins, the preseason favorites, just missed.

The AL Central is the only division that has four teams with winning records.

While MLB prepares the postseason stage for Shohei Ohtani, baseball's first 50-50 man, and Ramirez, who needs two home runs to became Cleveland's first 40-40 man, all is not sunshine and roses.

The White Sox, the fifth member of the AL Central, set a modern era record with 121 losses Friday night. Detroit dealt the White Sox that history-making loss, and in doing so qualified for the postseason by capping a remarkable run which saw them go 31-11 since Aug. 4.

Grady Sizemore, Cleveland's former All-Star Gold Glove center fielder, is the White Sox's interim manager. When the White Sox swept a three-game series from the Angels from Tuesday through Thursday to hold the line at 120 losses, the record set by the 1962 Mets, there was an outside chance that Chicago's plunge into infamy could be avoided.

The Tigers ended that Friday night.

"All all of a sudden on the last out, you realize you're part of the wrong side of history," Chicago first baseman Gavin Sheets told mlb.com. "It was a little more frustrating and it hurt a little bit more than I expected."

If there's one player on the Guardians who can relate to what the White Sox are feeling today it's left-hander Matthew Boyd.

In 2019 Boyd made 32 starts and pitched 185 1/3 innings for a Detroit team that lost 114 games. He went 9-12 with a 4.56 ERA.

"That year was so hard," said Boyd. "The goal is to win the game. If you pitch a complete game and lose 1-0, everyone is going to say, 'Hey, you did your job.' You find your success in that. But the goal is to win the game, right?"

Boyd said he learned a lot from that season.

"I believe it prepared me for seasons like what we're experiencing now," said Boyd. "You show up and say, 'My goal is go out and compete every pitch. It doesn't matter what happens. If we score or we don't score. I'm going to go out there and give it everything I've got.'

In that frame of mind Boyd said "You want to know what you can expect from yourself with the ball in your hand. Sometimes it can redefine success. You have to have your own definition of success. More often that not that will lead to success as the scoreboard says."

Boyd has spent much of his career in the AL Central competing against the White Sox.

"You don't wish that on anybody," said Boyd. "In terms of the loss column, they've had it harder than we did. But you have to have your convictions when you show up at the yard every day. Playing on losing teams is hard. It will push your convictions, but if anything it will affirm what you're really made of."

On Thursday, the A's played their last game at the Oakland Coliseum after 57 years, four World Series, six pennants and 17 division titles. They came to Oakland in 1968 and left after a 3-2 win over Texas. They will play in Sacremento for the next few years while waiting for their new ballpark to be built in Las Vegas.

Vogt spent the best part of his big league career in Oakland, six years to be exact. He went to two All-Star Games as a member of the A's and homered in the final at-bat with them before retiring in 2022.

If he wasn't managing the Guardians, there's a good chance he would have been at the Coliseum on Thursday.

"It's a sad day. It's a sad day for Oakland baseball fans," said Vogt. "I don't know the business. I don't know that side. All I can speak to is the fans and the people I got to know and the people that work for the A's and live near Oakland. It's a sad day for them.

"That franchise has been amazing during its time there. It was great to me and my family. We'll always have a part of us that loves Oakland and loves the A's. Knowing that there may never be another major league baseball game in the Oakland Coliseum is a sad day."

As the postseason rushes toward us and the 12 teams fortunate enough to qualify for critical wins and losses go through their final preparations, take a moment to remember the White and A's. Two down-on-their-luck ballcubs headed into a cold winter.