Now What?
Well, the Twins have played 162 games and their fate is still TBD. The White Sox host the Tigers this afternoon (1:05 central) in a makeup game from earlier this month. If the Sox lose, the division is ours. If they win, we play in Chicago tomorrow to determine the final playoff spot in the AL. The winner of that game heads to Tampa (actually St. Petes) to play the (Devil) Rays. If my math (not California math, real math) is correct the Twins will be starting Nick Blackburn, unless Slowey is able to pitch. Looks like the White Sox will start John Danks, who last pitched (poorly) against the Indians on Friday. He will be on short rest, which benefits the Twins. Although he only pitched 4 innings on Friday night. I would prefer Slowey, but if he isn’t healthy I guess we really have no choice. The bullpen should be rested after Baker went 7 strong yesterday and an off day today.
Playing in Chicago is not ideal of course, but us having the off day today and the White Sox not having one plays in our favor. I am not wild about the matchup, that is why we need to cheer really hard for the Tigers. The only thing they have to play for is a tie for last place, instead of occupying the cellar solo. Finishing behind the Royals is pretty much the worst outcome to a season, so maybe they will want to win. Or maybe they will get a kick out of messing up a divisional rivals playoff chances. Who knows, but I just hope they don’t mail it in an conceede defeat before the first pitch.
Another question I have is why is there even is a “tie-breaker” game? Why doesn’t the team with the better record head to head just win the division? I’m not just saying this because the Twins won. A tie-breaker should only be played if the season series is split.
Go Tigers!
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The Tigers are mailing it in: Freddy Garcia is starting.
Not only is your tie-breaker question valid, the very same concept stands for why it’s played in Chicago. If there IS going to be a tie-breaker, doesn’t the head-to-head record make more sense than a coin flip in deciding who hosts the game?
A coin toss is a dumb way to determine anything (except in football), especially when determining the location of a very important game. Both teams play much better at home, so it is even more important in this specific case. I really think they should change that in the future. I understand why they don’t give the division to the head to head winner, but said winner should AT LEAST be given homefield advantage in any possible “play-in” game. No question about it.
Agreed.
Also, I’m getting really annoyed by all the media people coming up with reasons that the Tigers would be “motivated” to win this game. As if that’s more important than the fact that they’re not a good baseball team. And that Freddy Garcia is probably more worried about his arm falling off than getting hitters out.
Frankly, I’m annoyed that the White Sox get to keep deferring games to later in the season. A while back they got to make up a game against the Orioles (which was rained out in April), and they lost, dropping them down to second place. We’d been hanging with them for weeks, half a game behind or tied for first. Then the deferred loss from April comes along, and we would have been in first for most of that time — but no, since the White Sox were allowed to defer a loss, they were “in first place for 147 games” this season.
If they hadn’t gotten to defer this loss, we wouldn’t be sitting in the clubhouse like a bunch of dopes right now. We’d be on our way to Tampa Bay.
(Deferring losses is a lot like deferring taxes, deferring payment, deferring after the coin toss … it’s pretty much always in your interest.)