DETROIT — In the center of the visitors’ clubhouse at Comerica Park on Thursday afternoon, as some Cleveland Guardians played cards and sipped beer and others gorged on square-cut pizza slices and bobbed their heads to ear-splitting EDM, a royal blue broom leaned conspicuously against a black leather chair.After the Guardians completed a four-game sweep of the Detroit Tigers, the scene atop the American League Central standings looks familiar. The Guardians, as evidenced by the cleaning equipment on display, are reveling in it.Cleveland, with its scrappy style and war chest of pitching, sits in first place. The Guardians have won baseball’s lowest-budget division three of the past four years.That spurred Tigers manager A.J. Hinch to say earlier this week, “The division runs through Cleveland. As much as we want to say otherwise, they’ve done it. … That’s the brutal truth. I don’t want to bow down to them. I don’t want to celebrate their wins, but they’ve put them up there.”It wasn’t supposed to be this way when these teams broke camp in February, though that’s an annual refrain at this point. The Tigers signed Framber Valdez and Justin Verlander, their payroll surging to the ninth-largest in the sport. On the heels of consecutive Wild Card berths and with a young lineup growing up, the Tigers seemed poised to finally seize control of the division. The Kansas City Royals lurked as a threat to Cleveland’s supremacy. Even the Minnesota Twins, engineers of a midsummer fire sale last year, were favored over the Guardians by projection systems and betting markets that forecast Cleveland for 75-80 wins.But here in late May, once again, the Guardians rule the roost, with a functional offense to support a customarily sturdy pitching staff. To much surprise, the Chicago White Sox have emerged from a years-long slumber to climb to second place with a winning record.As for the Tigers, injuries have ravaged their roster. Ace Tarik Skubal remains on the injured list after surgery to remove a loose body from his left elbow. Verlander has made only one start because of a hip issue. Other players have greatly underperformed. They have dropped 14 of their past 16 games. They are mired in last place, 9 1/2 games behind the Guardians.And Cleveland is asserting its dominance in a division that doesn’t seem too interested in changing any narratives. How do the Guardians — who own the league’s paltriest payroll, who employ one of the league’s youngest rosters and who sit comfortably atop a division as fierce as a kitten — keep getting away with it?“We’re here to win,” manager Stephen Vogt said. “We don’t rebuild here. We don’t take a step back. … And when José Ramírez is out there, he wants to win a World Series more than anybody on the planet, so the expectation is you’re coming here to help us win games. It’s not, ‘Hey, come get your feet wet and maybe in a couple years, we’ll be pretty good.’ We expect to win.”The Tigers once expected to win, too. They throttled to life two years ago when they staged a remarkable 31-13 finish, overcoming 0.2 percent odds to make the playoffs, then taking the Guardians to Game 5 in a tense AL Division Series.A year ago, the Tigers were the AL’s best team in the first half, then staged a meltdown of epic proportions. Detroit’s collapse coincided with a miraculous Guardians run, overcoming a 15 1/2-game deficit to win the division. The Tigers kept a white-knuckle grasp on a wild-card spot, and of course, the two teams met again in the playoffs. This time, the Tigers advanced in the best-of-three series.Now, in an American League that has just five teams above .500, it is too early to make any grand conclusions. Weird things seem to happen in the AL Central at a disproportionate rate anyway.But another Tigers-Guardians showdown in October might require another dose of the improbable. After their miserable series against the Guardians, the Tigers have fallen to 23rd in OPS. They still have 13 players on the injured list. Hinch is facing more heat than at any other point in his Tigers tenure.While an eerie quiet permeates the clubhouse, Skubal exclaiming, “F— yeah,” after the final pitch of a bullpen session is about the only sign of positivity in sight.The Tigers would have to go 67-44 from here to match last year’s win total of 87.“I think panic is an emotion that’s talked about outside this clubhouse,” Hinch said this week. “I think the concern, the effort level, being pissed off, being frustrated, all that is real. I think our guys are pretty beat up right now. But the schedule doesn’t stop. The 112 games we have left are going to present opportunities. That’s how we have to take it. But it’s pretty s—y right now.”Oddly enough, the Central, at 16 games under .500, is not even the league’s weakest division based on record. As the Astros implode, the Mariners underachieve and the Rangers battle mediocrity, the Athletics are the only AL West team with its head above water. Collectively, the five West teams sit 30 games under .500.Yet with the Guardians thriving and the Tigers tailspinning, will anyone else in the division spring a surprise?The Royals’ team OPS and ERA sit slightly below league average. Bobby Witt Jr. has accounted for 60% of their position player WAR. The Twins are dealing with a bullpen from hell and recently demoted Royce Lewis and Matt Wallner to Triple A.In the second year under manager Will Venable, the White Sox have greatly improved their brand of play. Japanese slugger Munetaka Murakami — doubted by some in the industry because of his propensity to swing and miss — leads the AL with 17 home runs. Right-hander Davis Martin fronts the rotation with a 1.61 ERA. Now the question looms: How long can they keep it up?“The White Sox are good. They can hit,” Vogt said. “They added a few pieces and their younger hitters are growing up and really coming into their own. So, it’s going to be a tough division. We know that. We knew that going into it.“I don’t think any of the five teams are going anywhere.”Maybe, but four of them are chasing the Guardians, yet again.Cleveland’s payroll sits a bit north of $70 million, pocket change for a big market — the equivalent of a superstar’s salary for a year or two. They’re spending half of what the Royals have spent on their roster, and one-third of what the Tigers have forked over for theirs. And they’re getting away with it.For years, the Guardians’ backbone has been pitching, with a vaunted factory that churns out one capable starter after another and allows the front office to ignore exorbitant free-agent prices or farm system-sapping trades. Other teams have tried to replicate their formula or locate their magic pixie dust on the black market. The Royals even plucked Brian Sweeney from Cleveland’s staff to serve as their pitching coach.Now, finally, they might have an offense to support the pitching.They walk — a ton. They run — a lot. They drive in all of that traffic — sometimes? A league-average attack might not sound like much, but it’s dramatically superior to the 29th-ranked offense the club somehow carried into October last season.Cleveland entered Thursday’s action with the sixth-best rotation ERA in the league, and then Joey Cantillo spun 5 2/3 scoreless innings. It’s the bats, though, that have the organization cautiously optimistic that the AL Central reign can continue for years to come.“It’s a deep lineup,” said Guardians outfielder Steven Kwan. “It’s a young lineup, too, which is really cool.”Ramírez hasn’t exhibited signs of slowing down. In fact, at 33 and with league-average sprint speed, he leads the league in stolen bases. Angel Martínez and Brayan Rocchio are enjoying breakout seasons at the plate. Right fielder Chase DeLauter and second baseman Travis Bazzana, a couple of Rookie of the Year candidates, have injected life into a pair of longstanding problem areas. At Triple-A Columbus, Top 100 prospects Ralphy Velazquez, Angel Genao and Cooper Ingle are all waiting for a call-up.These are the bizarro world Guardians, with a future built on bats more than arms. And yet, they’re the same old team, wreaking havoc on an underwhelming division, with bats, with arms and with brooms.“For me, I love Stephen Vogt, I love their coaching staff, I love their players,” Hinch said. “I love them from a distance because they’re tough to deal with when they’re across the way, but I have a lot of respect for how they go about it.”