Detroit ― The Tigers’ magic number is officially seven. But there’s a scenario this week where six will actually do.

The Tigers, leaders of the American League Central by 6.5 games, host the Cleveland Guardians, the second-place team in the division, for a three-game series, Tuesday through Thursday. And if the Tigers sweep the series, they will clinch their first division championship since 2014.

If the Tigers sweep the Guardians, that would give them a maximum win total of 88, the same as the Guardians. And since there is no Game 163s to break ties anymore, the head-to-head record between the teams is the tiebreaker. And a sweep would give the Tigers the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Guardians for the season series. with seven wins (so far) out of the 13 meetings, with three more scheduled in Cleveland next week.

The Tigers enter this week’s series with a 4-3 record against the Guardians this season, though Cleveland is playing better coming into the set, having won four in a row and nine of its last 10.

Detroit is coming off a 3-3 road trip, in which it won two of three games against the Yankees in New York in dominating fashion, before they lost two of three games against the Marlins in Miami. Both teams are off Monday.

If the Tigers don’t sweep the Guardians, we can all, for the time being anyway, go back to calculating the magic number, which is any combination of Tigers’ wins and Guardians’ losses.

The first time the Tigers and Guardians met this season, Cleveland won three of four games at Comerica Park in May. Then, in June, Detroit swept a three-game series in Cleveland.

The Guardians (78-71) are the defending AL Central champs. The Tigers (85-65) haven’t won the AL Central since they won four consecutive championships from 2011-14. The Tigers were a wild-card entrant into the playoffs a year ago.

One more number for Tigers’ fans to pay attention to right now is three: That’s the lead the Tigers have on the AL West-leading Seattle Mariners for the No. 2 seed in the AL playoffs, though Seattle has played two fewer games. The two division champs with the best records in each league get a first-round bye in the playoffs, while the division champion with the third-best record must play in a best-of-three wild-card round.

The Tigers qualified for the wild-card round of the playoffs a year ago, beating the Astros, 2-0, on the road, before falling to the Guardians, 3-2, in the best-of-five AL Division Series.

If the playoffs started today, the Toronto Blue Jays and Tigers would have the first-round bye, while the Mariners would play the Astros in one wild-card series, and the game’s greatest rivals, the Boston Red Sox and Yankees, would play each other in the other wild-card series.

Cleveland is 2.5 games out of the third and final wild-card spot in the AL.

tpaul@detroitnews.com

@tonypaul1984

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