The cruel joke before the season was that someone would win the AL Central because someone had to win the AL Central.

They were five teams with modest payrolls and meager expectations, each of them short on talent and long on hope.

Well, it turns out the path to the World Series — at least in the American League — is going right through the division.

What was widely regarded as the weakest in baseball in April has become a postseason heavyweight in October. Three of its teams are still alive in the divisional round, with the AL Central champion Guardians set to face the Tigers, fresh off a wild-card sweep of the AL West champion Astros, and the Royals going to New York to face the Yankees after sweeping the Orioles.

“Playing in the division all year, we saw the caliber of all the teams,” Guardians manager Stephen Vogt said. “Everybody plays each other very tough, plays very good baseball. And so it’s really cool. It’s great that we have three of our divisional teams.”

It’s not just that it’s three teams from one division, though.

It’s three teams from this particular division.

Each finished below .500 last season. In the Royals’ case, they matched a franchise record for ineptitude by losing 106 games — a full 50 more than they won. The Tigers won just 78 games and the Guardians won 76, which means the three teams that joined the AL East champion Yankees in the divisional round were a combined 66 games below .500 last year.

Who saw that coming?

Certainly not the sportsbooks. The Tigers and Guardians carried 66/1 odds to win the World Series on opening day, according to BetMGM, while the Royals were a 200-to-1 long shot — meaning if you were stupid enough, or prescient enough, to bet $100 on them back in March, you might be holding a ticket worth $20,000 in a few weeks.

“We’ve just got to take things one day at a time,” said Royals shortstop Bobby Witt Jr., who might have been a runaway MVP pick had the Yankees’ Aaron Judge not had a record-setting season of his own. “One step at a time, like we’ve been doing.”

It’s not just that the AL Central was bad last year, either. It’s that despite opening their pocketbooks in the offseason, with the Royals alone spending more than $100 million on free agents, they were still fielding clubs with modest payrolls.

The latest figures heading into Game 1 on Saturday night put the Royals at $117 million, the Guardians at $109 million and the Tigers at $101 million, each in the bottom third of the league. In fact, all of them combined barely surpasses the $311 million tab for the mighty Yankees.

DIAMONDBACKS: Arizona is shaking up its coaching staff after falling just short of the playoffs.

The team confirmed that pitching coach Brent Strom, assistant pitching coach Dan Carlson and bullpen coach Mike Fetters will not return in those roles next year.

Arizona endured numerous injuries to its pitching staff, including stints on the injured list by Eduardo Rodriguez, Zac Gallen, Merrill Kelly, Jordan Montgomery and one-time closer Paul Sewald. Diamondbacks owner Ken Kendrick also told Arizona Sports he was to blame for the high-priced signing of Montgomery, who underperformed and was sent to the bullpen.

The Diamondbacks had baseball’s highest-scoring offense at 5.47 runs per game, but one of the worst pitching staffs with an ERA of 4.62.

The reigning NL champion Diamondbacks finished tied with Atlanta and the New York Mets at 89-73, but missed the playoffs on tiebreakers.

ASTROS: For the first time since 2016, Houston failed to win a playoff game. And that’s not OK with General Manager Dana Brown.

A day after the Astros were swept by the Detroit Tigers in their AL wild card series, stopping a streak of seven straight trips to the AL Championship Series, Brown detailed his top priority for the offseason.

“First of all, one of the things we want to make sure we do is get back deep into the postseason,” he said Thursday. “That’s going to be our vision, that’s going to be our focus.”

When it comes to fulfilling that goal, “we’re not taking anything off the table,” he said.

The Astros, who won the World Series in 2017 and 2022, looked as if they might fall short of the playoffs altogether at the beginning of the season. They got off to a 7-19 start, falling 10 games behind Seattle in the AL West. But they finished with an 88-73 record and won their seventh division title in eight years, with the only exception coming in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season.

Manager Joe Espada, who was hired after Dusty Baker retired, was impressed with Houston’s resiliency this season.

“A team gets tested and you see the character of your team,” he said. “Through adversity and the way we were tested early, I knew that this team was strong enough to make a push and get us into the postseason.”

Now they’ll look to return to the playoffs and make another long run next year. The first step could be re-signing star third baseman Alex Bregman. Represented by Scott Boras, the two-time All-Star is eligible for free agency and assuredly will command a hefty new paycheck.

Bregman has spent his entire nine-year career with Houston. He said after Wednesday’s loss to Detroit that he hopes to remain with the team. Second baseman Jose Altuve said he would be “heartbroken” if Bregman were to sign elsewhere.

Houston also could look for an upgrade at first base. José Abreu was released with $20.8 million remaining on his contract after he hit .124 through June 13, and the Astros never found a consistent replacement at the position.

Though Brown repeated his “nothing is off the table” comment when asked if he’d try to add to the rotation, he believes the Astros will be a good spot in that area because of the improvement of their young pitchers this season.

Multiple injuries to Houston’s starters forced the Astros to insert Ronel Blanco and rookie Spencer Arrighetti into the rotation. Blanco threw a no-hitter in his season debut and was second on the team with 13 wins and a 2.80 ERA. Arrighetti made 28 starts and was selected AL Rookie of the Month for August after going 3-2 with a 1.95 ERA.

Hunter Brown, in his second MLB season, went 11-9 with a 3.49 ERA to help steady the rotation during a year when three-time Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander made just 17 starts due to injuries.

HOUSTON LED THE major leagues with 35 pitch clock violations and Washington’s Kyle Finnegan topped individuals with 11.

Violations by pitchers, batters and catchers totaled 602, down from 1,048 in 2023, the first season of the timer. There were 465 by pitchers, 133 by batters and four by catchers, down from 747, 286 and 15.

Washington was second with 31, followed by Arizona (30), the Los Angeles Angels and Milwaukee (29 each), Pittsburgh (27), the New York Mets (26) and Atlanta and the New York Yankees (25 each).

Colorado, Kansas City and Oakland had the fewest at 10 apiece.

Finnegan was followed by Toronto’s Chris Bassitt (eight); Texas’ John Gray, Atlanta’s Reynaldo López and the Mets’ Jose Quintana (seven each) and Cleveland’s Tyler Beede, Houston’s Framber Valdez and the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto (five each).

Andy Pages of the Dodgers topped batters with five violations, followed by Washington’s Ildemaro Vargas (four) and Houston’s Yordan Alvarez, Philadelphia’s Nick Castellanos, Pittsburgh’s Oneil Cruz and Cincinnati’s Santiago Espinal (three each).

In the first year of the clock, Pittsburgh led pitcher violations with 41 and Philadelphia reliever Craig Kimbrel had the most individual violations with 13.

There were also 34 pitcher violations of the disengagement limit this year and five batter timeout violations.

There were just two defensive shift violations, down from 26 in the first year of the rule requiring two infielders to be on the infield dirt, on each side of second base. The violations were by Minnesota shortstop Carlos Correa against Cleveland in the sixth inning on May 17 and by Boston shortstop Ceddanne Rafaela against Tampa Bay in the second inning on May 20.

VISITING TEAMS HAD a 109-107 edge in extra-inning games this year in the second season starting extra innings with a runner on second base has been a permanent rule.

Visitors have a 477-465 edge in extra innings since the so-called “ghost runner” rule was first adopted as a pandemic alteration in 2020. From 2017-19, home teams had a 312-294 advantage.

There were 162 games this season that went 10 innings, with home teams going 83-79. There were 31 that lasted 11 (visiting teams had 16-15 edge), 16 that went 12 (visiting teams 12-4), five that went 13 (home teams 4-1).

Two games stretched to 14 innings: Toronto’s 5-3 victory over visiting Pittsburgh on May 31, and Colorado’s 5-4 victory at the Chicago White Sox on June 30.

The runner-on-second rule is used in extra innings during the regular season but not in the postseason.