Two teams recently lost four games apiece to two separate AL East teams on hot streaks of their own.

One lost by scores of 5-4, 6-4, 3-2 and 7-6, with the eventual winner forced to walk off their victories those first three times. Said winner also had more than triple the dollars’ worth of players at their disposal.

The other lost 8-3, 2-1, 8-2 and 3-2, including three sub-five-inning outings by starting pitching and, rarest of rare accomplishments, a squandered early lead over arguably the best pitcher in baseball. The lead as the rare thing, not the squandering.

So on the surface, what should look like two meddling, unspectacular teams fighting for the right to stay ahead of the Indians is a little more complicated than that. Yes, the Twins are terrible on the road (4-12), but the bulk of those games were lost without their best bat and the calm equalizer of their pitching; for all intents and purposes, the Twins up until Joe Mauer’s return sat where the White Sox would be if you were to place A.J. Pierzynski alongside the injured Carlos Quentin.

But the light in all this comes not from that miserable showing in Toronto, nor from that shellacking in Cleveland, Baltimore, Texas or Kansas City, but from the idea that this week’s three-game set will go a long way in defining everything about this season’s A.L. Central.

Remember when it was supposed to be a dogfight between the Sox, Twins and Indians? Shame on the Tribe for not holding up their end of the bargain (unless they have another brililant second-half-for-naught up their sleeve), but it’s hard to find anyone who’d be genuinely upset that the Royals put up a fight. The thing is, taking two of three this time around puts the Sox right back in the middle of the pack. An admittedly terrible pack and a shamefully middling middle, but the middle of the pack all the same, and with the first-place Detroit Tigers clinging oh-so-tightly to such a shaky and uncertain spot at the top you have to believe that even in these sorry times, it’s still anyone’s division.

The great philosopher Paul Konerko once said you don’t know where a team truly stands until the first of June. Perhaps this is true, perhaps it is not. What it is, however, is twelve games and thirteen games away. If they’re simply a good team in hiding, this would certainly be a fine time to start acting like it.