from the perspective of a lifetime fan: 

with the start of the baseball season this week, my cleveland indians begin a season-long race for the division with the detroit tigers. they are two of the best teams in baseball, by most accounts, but their strengths and weaknesses couldnt seem to differ more. where do the advantages lie?

This begins with the overall salaries of the major market tigers and the mid-market indians

(figures come from the USA Today salary database)

Cleveland $78,970,066 (16th in baseball, and 14th out of the 16 legitimate contenders)

Detroit     $137,685,196 (3rd in baseball and 3rd out of the 16 legitimate contenders)

 position by position analysis:

POS	Indians	advantage	Tigers
C	Martinez	←big	Rodriguez
1B	Garko	even	Guillen
2B	Cabrera	even	Polanco
3B	Blake	big→	Cabrera
SS	Peralta	moderate→	Renteria
LF	Dellucci	big→	Jones
CF	Sizemore	←moderate	Granderson
RF	Gutierrez	big→	Ordonez
DH	Hafner	←moderate	Sheffield
SP1	Sabathia	←moderate	Verlander
SP2	Carmona	←big	Rogers
SP3	Westbrook	even	Bonderman
SP4	Byrd	←moderate	Robertson
SP5	Lee	even	Willis
CL	Borowski	even	Jones
BPEN		←big

 Dark Horse Candidates

Indians: Franklin Gutierrez, Ryan Garko, Asdrubal Cabrera

These three all have their first full years under their belts and all have the talent and are of the typical age of to have “break-out” years. If just one of them takes that next step into stardom the indians lineup will improve exponentially

Tigers: Dontrelle Willis

 He lead the Marlins to the World Series not so long ago, if he can even approach that form the Tigers will have the legitimate rotation that they lost when Kenny Rogers’ age caught up to him.

Potential Downfall:

Indians: C.C. Sabathia’s contract

This could be a distraction for the young team, who will most likely lose their ace to a large market team at the end of the year. Sabathia has cut off negotiations until the end of the year but this will not stop the press from asking him about it every day.

Tigers: too many big personalities on one team

In Cabrera the Tigers have a quiet superstar who can gel with Granderson. However Ordonez, Rogers, Willis and especially Sheffield have larger-than-life egos that have the potential to tear apart a veteran team during tough times. We saw it last year with the White Sox, will we see it here again?

The Skinny: 

 both teams will beat up on each other so often that it is unlikely the loser of this battle will win the wildcard. the road to the post season most likely lies in the division, especially with Boston and New York looming in the east.

Prediction:

Miguel Cabrera has his finest year in a new city with a new contract, despite that big ballpark, and wins the MVP. The tigers score 1000 runs but cant quite make up the ground they lost early in the year when their only solid relievers were on the disabled list (both may miss april)

The Indians get solid years from Sabathia and Carmona, not up to par with last year, and are picked up with comeback years from Lee and Westbrook. They handle a transition at closer halfway through the year to Japanese import Masahide Kobayashi. Their young team gels down the stretch and they win the division by 3 games despite only having 94 wins