Happy Memorial Day, Twins Daily! I hope that you all are enjoying your long weekend and getting to spend some time with your families while we, as a nation, honor our fallen heroes.

Memorial Day is a big day. It marks the beginning of when the MLB standings start to mean something. Now almost a third of the way into the season, there can be no more "small sample" excuses, no more "cold weather" excuses, and a slow start is more than just a slow start now. With all of that said, here is a look at the AL Central entering play on Memorial Day:

Twins: 36-16

Indians: 26-26 10 GB

White Sox: 23-29 13 GB

Tigers: 19-31 16 GB

Royals: 18-34 18 GB

Nobody is surprised about the bottom three, but all of baseball is surprised by what is at the top. The Indians, who are without Corey Kluber and Mike Clevinger, are as average as their .500 record suggests. They have scored the 5th-fewest runs in baseball and now have a patchwork rotation because of the injuries. To compound matters, Trevor Bauer and Carlos Carrasco have struggled to hold down the fort in Kluber and Clevinger's absence. Bauer only has one quality start in his past six tries and Carrasco has a 4.60 ERA on the season.

As for the Twins, there has been plenty of literature on this site about how they have been doing. I am not going to reiterate it, I will instead bring something else to the table.

*The Twins are currently playing to a .692 win percentage. If they were to sustain that pace, they would end the season with 112 wins.

*The Twins Magic Number to clinch the AL Central is currently 101 with 110 games left for each team, so any combination of 101 Twins wins and Indians losses will clinch the division for the Twins.

*If the Twins were to play .500 the rest of the way, they would end up with 91 wins. For the Indians to reach 91 wins, they would need to go 65-45, a win percentage of .591. In other words, if the Twins played .500 the rest of the way, the Indians would need to play at a 96-win pace to catch them.

*The Twins will, most likely, play better than .500 the rest of the way, but probably won't finish with 112 wins, either. So, for example, let's say the Twins play (approximately) .550 for the next 110 games. That would give them 96 wins, a reasonable total. The Indians would then need to go 70-40 (.636, a 103-win pace) to catch the Twins.

Now, I realize that the math does not look good for the Indians. However, there are still 16 head-to-head matchups between the Twins and Indians, 9 of which are at Progressive Field. Realistically, the Indians need to win BARE MINIMUM 10, but more likely 11 or 12, of those match-ups to have a chance. If they can't muster that, then they probably don't have a prayer. FiveThirtyEight currently has a 94% probability assigned to the Twins to make the postseason, with an 89% chance of winning the Central. It's not over yet, but it's getting late early for the Tribe.