Fire Gardy

The Twins have 11 games remaining.  8 are on the road.  We finish up in Chicago tonight, then head to KC for the weekend.  Followed by a 4 gamer in lovely Detroit.  We sit 2.5 games behind the Tigers (the odd game will be made up Thursday, when we are off and the Tigers play at Cleveland), but we do kind of control our own destiny.  If we just keep winning we will win the division. That has to be comforting for the players.  While it would be nice for Detroit to give us some help by losing, it isn’t necessary.  If we can go into Detroit less than 4 games back and sweep them, we take the lead and head home to play KC.  Obviously, winning 11 straight games starting tonight will be difficult, it isn’t impossible.  We also don’t NEED the Tigers to lose to anyone other than us.  Oddly, Detroit is in the same boat. 

Manship’s poor outing last night was disheartening as his spot is due up at least once more.  On the broadcast last night Dick mentioned possibly using Liriano in that spot next Sunday.  Baker, Pavano, Blackburn, and Duensing have all been encouraging lately so hopefully they can carry that momentum into their next starts.  I’m sure Gardy will do some rotation shuffling with one off day left for him to work with. 

Mathematically the Twins have a 25.8% chance of making the playoffs, which makes us the only team alive in the AL race.   While the Yankees are the only team to have locked up a spot, the Angels and Red Sox are pretty much there.  Both the Twins and the Tigers are very flawed teams, but we are making September interesting. 

In the immortal words of Al Davis: Just Win, Baby!