The Cleveland Indians hit the halfway mark of the 2013 Major League season over the weekend and, thanks to their first four-game sweep of the White Sox in Chicago since 1948 and Detroit’s loss on Monday afternoon, will head to Kansas City in first place in the American League Central Division.

The sweep gave the Tribe a winning record in the month of June (15-13) for the first time since 2007. (We’ll let you decide if you want to place any significance on the years 1948 and 2007.)

The Indians lead Detroit by a half-game despite allowing 43 more runs than the Tigers (while scoring the same amount), despite having their bullpen give up essentially the same amount of runs (4.4 per nine innings) as Detroit’s sub-par bullpen (4.3), and despite blowing more saves (13 to nine) than the Tigers.

How the heck is the Tribe in first place now that the calendar has turned to July?

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So this is what First Place in July feels like?

INDIANS - 6 | ROYALS - 5

W: Cody Allen (3-0)

L: Tim Collins (2-3)

S: Chris Perez (8)

[BOXSCORE]

KC's Luis Mendoza should be extremely happy with his four innings and four runs. Given the way he was pitching, he should have been splattered against the wall, scrapped off, and splattered again.

Both situations in which the Indians scored against him, in the first, and then again in the fourth, could have called for more runs. To have the bases loaded with one out in the first and the fourth, and walk away having only let up four runs?

The Indians really let him off the hook and made the game closer than it should have been. Thankfully they won, or else that would have been tragic.

But here is the great thing about Jason Giambi and Jason Kipnis both hitting into those double plays earlier in the game.

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The Indians did not deserve to win on Wednesday, but they came close to doing so before the bullpen performed suboptimally and the Tribe lost 6-5.  You would THINK that the Indians, who outhit the Royals 12-6, DID deserve to win on THURSDAY, but the fact is, they did NOT.  Walks still count.  And hit-by-pitches.  And fielding the ball.  And not throwing pitches that are excremental.  And since the Cleveland bullpen did ALL of these things, they LOST.  The Tigers are now in first place in the A.L. Central.  Fortunately, Buff is not bitter.

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At the halfway point of the season, the Indians have played great at times, terrible at others, and haven’t really been in between. After starting 8-13, the Indians rattled off 18 wins in 22 games to be 26-17. They followed that up with a stretch where they went 4-16 to fall to 30-33. Now, the Indians are 42-38, winners of 12 of their last 17.

With a pretty big sample size to judge, I’m willing to say that the Indians will be in the playoff hunt for the duration and there’s even a chance that they can challenge the Tigers. I’ll give a side-by-side stat comparison in an abridged version of this week’s View from the Porch. The Indians have a pretty generous schedule the rest of the way that should prevent long stretches of losing like they have had this season. When the Indians had their 4-16 stretch, they were playing a lot of good teams and had a nine-game, three city road trip.

When you look at the other teams in the wild card hunt - Oakland, Texas, Tampa, Boston, New York, and Toronto - all of those teams will be beating up on each other. The Indians will see a lot of Chicago, who will start to sell off some of their tradable pieces, Kansas City, who can’t seem to put the complete package together, and Minnesota, who is always a frustrating team to play against, but has a very poor starting rotation. The Indians also play the Mets, Astros, and Marlins in September, three of the worst teams in baseball.

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