Fire Gardy

Now that the first round of the postseason is over and we have to wait a few days before anybody plays baseball again (good schedule, Selig! Let’s make sure there’s baseball in November! And make sure none of the games end before midnight, please. I don’t like being awake at work.), let’s take a look back at how our predictions did for the LDS. And I’ll also determine a winner!

(Note that my selection of a winner is unilateral, and my opponent, FunBobby, had no say in picking it. Just wanted to put that out there.)

Red Sox vs Angels

sirsean: Red Sox in five
FunBobby: Angels in five
A. Higgins: Angels in five
spangler: Red Sox in four
Reality: Red Sox in four 

The Angels didn’t show up in this one until they got to Boston and had virtually no chance at taking the series — though they were a walk-off Lowrie base hit away from sending it to a fifth game. Looks like audience member spangler was dead on on this one, with a half point going to sirsean for getting the team right.

Rays vs White Sox

sirsean: Rays in four
FunBobby: Rays in four
A. Higgins: Rays in three
spangler: Rays in five
Reality: Rays in four 

Everyone picked the Rays, with sirsean and FunBobby picking up a full point for picking the correct number of games; spangler and A. Higgins earned half points for getting the team right.

Dodgers vs Cubs

sirsean: Dodgers in five
FunBobby: Cubs in four
A. Higgins: Cubs in three
spangler: Cubs in four
Reality: Dodgers in three 

This one was a bit of a surprise; only sirsean scored, picking up a half point for guessing the team, but getting the number of games wrong.

Brewers vs Phillies

sirsean: Brewers in four
FunBobby: Brewers in five
A. Higgins: Phillies in four
spangler: Phillies in four
Reality: Phillies in four 

We clearly divided here between winners and losers. A. Higgins and spangler got a full point apiece for apparently being able to see into the future, sirsean was way too high on the Brewers, and FunBobby’s pathological indifference to the National League came back to bite him.

Scoreboard

sirsean: 2
FunBobby: 1
A. Higgins: 1.5
spangler: 2.5

So the trophy goes to spangler, whose powers of prediction are unmatched! Congratulations!

We’ll be back soon with LCS picks.

Lets take a look at the Twins free agents and who they should keep, and who they should let walk.  I’m assumin the team will pick up the option on Mike Redmond, for a hair less than a million.

First up, Dennys Reyes. He made $1MM in 2008, and wasn’t very good.  With the emergence of Craig Breslow and Jose Mijares there is no need for an overpriced lefty.  Let him walk.

Nick Punto.  Punto “earned” $2.4MM in 2008 and would probably require a small raise.  Still under $3MM, maybe $2.6 or $2.7.  That is too much for someone we can easily replace.  Tolbert and Harris are both utility players, no need to have a utility man who makes more money than our third and fourth best hitters combined (Kubel and Young, I don’t know if that is actually true but its close, with Kubel making $1.3 and Young probably somewhere near league minimum, if you want to replace Young with Span go ahead, that numbers still work).  I think the Twins will re-sign him for somewhere close to $3MM and it will be a waste of money when Tolbert is nearly identical and millions cheaper.

Adam Everett. This one is a no brainer.  Goodbye.

Eddie Guardado. Again, I think this is a no brainer. I’ve already mentioned two lefties who are more effective, no need to carry three.  Eddie G made $2MM in 2008, no reason to pay him that.  Goodbye.

We are still on the hook for abour $2.6 of Mike Lamb’s remaining contract.  and we will be paying about 7.65 million to our “under control” players.  Guerrier and Kubel are due moderate raises through arbitration, and Crain (1.7MM), Cuddyer (7.667MM), Mauer (10.5MM), Morneau (11.6MM) and Nathan (11.25MM) are all under contract.  This should be a much more low stress offseason.  Lets hope Wild Bill makes the right moves.

UPDATE: Delmon Young.

Heard this: The Twins are working on a contract extension with Gardy, whose current contract expires after 2009.

For some reason, teams and managers alike find it an untenable situation when a manager actually manages during the last year of his contract. I don’t fully understand that, but that’s the way it works. So it comes as no surprise that the Twins would extend Gardy before the final year of his contract begins — after such a good year, a vote of non-confidence like that would be all over the media and send the wrong message to all of our players.

This is probably a good move, and I’m sure the Twins fully expect to have Gardy in the new dugout at Target Field in 2010. I can only hope that he starts to learn the value of having people on base and making the pitcher work, as opposed to being most excited about possibly fitting a game in in under two hours.

I’d expect his extension to be in the range of 2 years (2010-2011), $2.75-3 million, if the team’s history with Gardenhire is any guide. He’s on his fourth consecutive two year deal, with gradually increasing pay each time. Each time, he signed the extension before the final year of the contract started.

I’ll keep my eye on this as it develops.

Around here we tend to give Ron Gardenhire a hard time about his “old school” methods and beliefs, and the two-faced way in which he, for example, teaches the players both to “take pitches and make the pitchers work” and to “stay aggressive and put the ball in play,” and that the fact that the Twins don’t draw any walks and swing at more first pitches and pitches out of the zone don’t seem to matter to him.

But it could be worse. Last night, Jerry Manuel was given a two year extension by the Mets. His first duty as manager is to find out why the Mets collapsed in September again, this time on his watch.

“We have to grow from every time that we get as close as we get and don’t make it, and we have to review and kind of marinate on why we don’t make it,” Manuel said during a conference call.

That makes sense. There’s nothing wrong with that, really. I don’t know how valuable it is to really dwell on past failures, but if it takes a little time to learn from them it’s probably fine. So after marinating for a while, what did Manuel come up with?

“You get so many statistical people together, they put so many stats on paper, and they say, well, if you do this and you score this many runs, you do that many times, you’ll be in the playoffs,” he said.

“That’s not really how it works, and that’s what we have to get away from. And that’s going to have to be a different mind-set of the team in going forward. We must win and we must know how to win rather than win because we have statistical people. We have to win because we have
baseball players that know and can understand the game.”

Yes. It’s so obvious! The reason the Mets collapsed was because of statistics. Not only that, but because there are too many “statistical people.” I can only hope that Manuel can replace those statistical people with baseball players who can understand the game. I’m going to go ahead and make the assumption, though, that the “statistical people” who work for the Mets, if there are any, work in the front office. Not on the actual baseball team, where you’d actually want actual baseball players.

My guess is that some young punk crossed Manuel once, and mentioned something about analysis saying that you want to avoid giving up outs — because there are only so many of them. Manuel obviously didn’t take too well to that, instead preferring to teach his players to be more clutch … by giving away outs.

“We have to put a value on say, moving a runner over. [...] We have to put a value on infield back, ground ball that’s sufficient to score a run,” he said. “Those types of things have to be accented in order for us, in my opinion, to kind of get to the next level.”

Awesome. The main problem the Mets have had this year is they scored too many runs without recording an out on the play. So at this point it’s clear that Manuel is an old school type of guy who prefers effort over talent, who wants clutchy grinders on his team, the kind of guy who thinks Carlos Beltran is no good because things look (and are) easy for him. Given that Manuel’s team has a core of Beltran, David Wright, Jose Reyes, and Carlos Delgado, he must feel pretty good about his team. Right? I mean, those are pretty good players who consistently put up pretty good numbers. You could do a lot worse than having those guys on your team.

“You don’t see a lot of guys that have statistical numbers play well in these championship series,” Manuel said. “What you see is usually the little second baseman or somebody like that carries off the MVP trophy that nobody expected him to do. That’s because he’s comfortable in
playing that form of baseball, so therefore when the stage comes, it’s not a struggle for him.”

Blink. I find it difficult to understand exactly what he means by this. Does he mean that he’d prefer Wright and Delgado don’t do as well during the season? Should Reyes and Beltran steal fewer bases until after the Mets are in the playoffs? Isn’t this solving the exact opposite of the problem?

First, let’s look back and see who the World Series MVPs were over the past few years:

2007: Mike Lowell
2006: David Eckstein
2005: Jermaine Dye
2004: Manny Ramirez
2003: Josh Beckett
2002: Troy Glaus
2001: Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling

That’s pretty much a list of good players, who tend to have good statistical regular seasons, and also happened to do well in the last handful of games they played in that particular year. Jerry Manuel might be the only person in the world who would pass on the chance to have Lowell, Dye, Manny, Beckett, Glaus, Randy Johnson and Schilling on his team — after all, their numbers are too good. That means they’re bad.

And David Eckstein? I presume he’s exactly the player Manuel was talking about when he said a little second baseman who carried off the MVP when nobody expected him to. (The other MVPs don’t even come close to meeting that criterion.) Well, there are a few reasons nobody “expected” Eckstein to win the WS MVP in 2006.

1) Nobody expected the Cardinals to be in the World Series in 2006
2) Certainly nobody expected them to win
3) David Eckstein is not a good player
4) While Eckstein hit .364/.391/.500 in the Series, his teammate Scott Rolen hit .421/.476/.737 (which is quite obviously a lot better)

But Jerry Manuel doesn’t care about these things. Jerry Manuel only cares about the fact that Eckstein performed better in the World Series than he did during the regular season, and that if the Mets had a bunch more players like that, then, um, they’d do better during the regular season. No, wait, I don’t know what Manuel was getting at.

The odd thing is that he didn’t say anything about the team’s actual problem, the bullpen. It’s tough to win games when the bullpen blows every lead you ever manage to take. The Mets lost like 10 games when leading after 8 innings. The Phillies lost 0 such games. That is where your team needs to improve.

But don’t tell Jerry Manuel that. He might think you’re a “statistical person” and replace you with a baseball player.

So every time Gardy does something that doesn’t seem to make any sense, know this: it could be a whole lot worse.

The offseason starts early this year for the Twins, and the rumors have already started swirling. With shortstop a major weakness for the Twins, and the White Sox predictably being handled by the Rays, the first Twins rumor is that we’re targeting Orlando Cabrera.

My initial reaction: Good idea, and in fact I’d been thinking about this for a while; Cabrera dislikes the White Sox and has been outspoken about how the Twins are a team and clubhouse that are the model for teams everywhere. Unsurprisingly, this has not improved his standing in Ozzie’s eyes, and he almost certainly won’t be extended in Chicago. And he’d definitely be an upgrade over what we’re currently getting out of our shortstops!

After letting it sink in for a bit: Cabrera turns 34 in November and only hit .281/.334/.371 this season. Edgar Renteria showed us that shortstops can hit the wall really fast in their mid-thirties, and given that a multi-year big-money contract would be required, it’s kind of a big risk. Also, while I appreciate the fact that he doesn’t fit in the White Sox clubhouse, he has a history of being a disruptive element in every clubhouse and has rarely been liked by his fellow players. Guys with that kind of reputation aren’t exactly who you want to target — and OC’s was built over the last 15 years in professional baseball, unlike Delmon Young’s which happened in a brief couple of years when he should have been hidden away in college.

Nick Punto hit .284/.344/.382 this season. Seriously. If we go after Cabrera, we could be looking at signing a guy who hits worse than Punto and is at best marginally better in the field to a 3 year, $30 million contract.

Wild Bill would be wise to look elsewhere for a shortstop. Perhaps Rafael Furcal, if the bidding doesn’t go too crazy.

We had three games yesterday, Brewers-Phillies, Cubs-Dodgers, and Angels-Red Sox. 

Brewers 1Phillies 3

Cole Hamels was stratight dealing from the first pitch.  He didn’t give the brewers a chance.  So, in typical Wisconsin fashion they decided if anyone was going to beat them, it was going to be themselves.  Rickie Weeks committed and error at second base that led to all three Phillies runs. It also didn’t help that Gallardo walked 5 guys.  Lidge pitched a scare ninth, 35 pitches, 2 hits, 1 walk, 1 ER, with 3ks, to close out the game.

Cubs 2 Dodgers 7

This was, in my opinion, the biggest game of the day.  Everyone seemed to agree the Cubs really needed to set the tone for this series by winning game one.  With Billingsley starting game two for the Dodgers a game one loss could prove detrimental to the Cubbies.   Ryan Dempster labored for four innings, but somehow managed to shut the Dodgers out through four.  He then loaded the bases in the fifth for firstbaseman James Loney who homered giving the Dodgers a 4-2 lead they wouldn’t relinquish.  LA tacked on 3 more runs off of Marshall, Smadrzija, and Jason Marquis.  Six of their runs came via the homerun, with 8 of the nine total runs coming via the homer.  I’m hoping Casey Blake got made fun of in the clubhouse postgame for being a little girl and hitting an RBI single.

Red Sox 4 Angels 1

By losing game one the Angels put that much more pressure on themselves to win game two.  If they can’t manage to do that, they will have to face Josh Beckett in Boston in a series clinching game. Something nobody wants to do.  Lester looked very good, giving up just one unearned run, over 7 innings of 6 hit ball. He did walk one, but struck out 7.  Lackey struggled a little but, but holding the Red Sox to 2 runs into the 7th is pretty impressive.

Today we have Tampa Bay-Chicago (1:30pm); Milwuakee-Philadelphia (5:00pm) and Chicago-LA (8:30pm).  Should be another great day for baseball.

The firegardy.com preseason predictions can be found here. 

 Now that the regular season is (finally) over, here’s our preview of the divisional series. We were going to do a preview of the entire playoffs, but it turns out that we here at Fire Gardy have different opinions on some of the matchups … and trying to predict the winner of the LCS and World Series doesn’t really work when you can’t agree on who’s even playing. So stay tuned for more contradicting predictions later on throughout October.

American League

ALDS: Boston Red Sox vs Los Angeles Angels

sirsean:

The Angels finished the season with the best record in baseball, the only 100 win team, having coasted for the last couple months of the season due to their presence on the West Coast, where baseball teams go to suck. (Apparently.) This is a good, solid team with an excellent rotation, the single season saves champion, and an impressive middle of the lineup. They traded for Mark Texeira for exactly this series — they needed pop to combat the Red Sox in the postseason.

And they’re facing the Red Sox right away, of course. Even without Josh Beckett (possibly), the Red Sox have a formidable rotation — and Beckett hasn’t pitched well this season anyway, given that it’s his bi-annual down year. And without the powerful presence of Manny Ramirez, the lineup actually scored more runs than it did with him; that can’t fill the Angels with confidence, even though every one of their pitchers would rather face Jason Bay than Manny.

FunBobby:

The Angels grabbed first in the AL West and never really looked back. Seattle was supposed to give them a run for their money, instead the Mariners just ran away with the fans’. Even though LAA was in first by double digits at the trade deadline they decided to go out and get Mark Texeria to help them in the postseason. The Angels have a strong starting staff, anchored by John Lackey, and followed by Ervin Santana, Jared Weaver, and Joe Saunders. Their bullpen is anchored by K-Rod, but they have a few decent setup men as well. Jose Arredondo stands out from this group. He is a 24 year old future closer (sound familiar to where K-Rod was in 2002?) who has 55 strikeouts in 61ip with a 1.62 ERA and 1.05 WHIP. He vultured 10 wins out of the bullpen, and had 16 holds. He should be able to keep the Red Sox in check for the last inning or two before K-Rod comes in to slam the door.

I just really don’t like the Red Sox. Only being able to start Beckett once really hurts them, but Jon Lester and Dice-K aren’t terrible starters for games one and two. I’m guessing they will either use Tim Wakefield or the game one starter on short rest for game four.

It sounds like the Red Sox will be able to get at least some at bats out of Mike Lowell and JD Drew. This really helps then, I don’t know if Francona plans on starting them both, or using them off the bench at first and then starting them in games two and three.

sirsean’s take: In this matchup of AL titans, I think the Red Sox will take the series in five games. Never underestimate the team that miraculously wins in the postseason just when the cable channels realize they need the ratings boost.

FunBobby’s take: I like the Angels, mainly because they will only have to face Beckett once. Dice-K walks guys and the Angels can do damage on the basepaths. They are one of the most complete teams the AL has seen in a while. LAA in five.

ALDS: Chicago White Sox vs Tampa Bay Rays

FunBobby:

The Rays, who actually play in St. Petes, rode a young starting rotation and core of position players to their first playoff appearance ever. They beat the Red Sox down the stretch for the division title. Their rotation consists of James Shields (the projected game 1 starter), Scott Kazmir (last years strikeout champ), Matt Garza, along with “youngsters” Andy Sonnanstine and Edwin Jackson. Their lineup also has some great young players. The elder statesman of the group is Carl Crawford, who was hurt for the stretch run but has been activated. Carlos Pena and Evan Longoria are their two homerun threats, with Donnier Navarro and Rocco Baldelli also able to crank one out now and again. David Price gives Joe Maddon a valuable arm out of the bullpen to bolster his already strong relief corps.

Not sure how this young team will handle the pressures of October baseball. The one player who comes to mind as having playoff experience is Cliff Floyd, and he is a bench player at this point. Jason Barlett played in the playoffs with the Twins in 2006, but most of their “core players” have played no meaningful games in August, let alone October. I like how they played down the stretch to hold off a very good Red Sox team, they really showed their mettle.

The White Sox won the division in game 163 in a game that should have been played at the Metrodome. All bitterness aside I do not like their chances. They have been using a four man rotation for what seems like weeks, and they have a phobia of domes. I think the Rays talented young pitchers will be able to hold the White Sox aging sluggers at bay for a five game series and take it.

sirsean:

The Rays are obviously the best story in baseball this season, the quintessential “worst to first” story that’s truly American, the story of the 1991 World Series. I was a year early on this team — I thought they’d be good last year — but in the end it was the Twins front office that pushed the Rays over the edge by sending them Matt Garza and Jason Bartlett to shore up the weaknesses on their team without taking anything they truly valued in return. The cores of both their rotation and lineup are both young and talented, setting this team up to be a force to be reckoned with in the years to come; that said, their bullpen and defense have both overachieved this season, and I’d expect them to regress next season. So that leaves this year as their window, and they sure look poised to take advantage.

On the other hand, the White Sox barely narrowly defeated the Twins in the Central, mostly because they didn’t-want it just a little less than the Twins. The tiebreaker was something of a misnomer; instead, it was a coinflip and a heartbreaker. But power keeps you in every game, as the Sox showed in their last few games by winning with homers. Of course, this team lives and dies by the home run, and the Rays have solid pitching that may be able to hold them in the park. Alexei Ramirez, the Cuban Missile, is probably second behind Evan Longoria for rookie of the year. Thome, Griffey, Dye, and Konerko are imposing sluggers in the middle of the lineup. AJ plays dirtier than anyone, and plays the kind of headgames that create victories from thin air. It’s impossible to dismiss these White Sox, no matter how bad they’ve looked over the past few weeks. Don’t forget 2005.

sirsean’s take: With the Twins out, I have to go to my second team, and that’s the Rays. Youth wins in four games.

FunBobby’s take: Rays in four, I hope one of the games is close enough to give Hawk a heart attack.

National League

NLDS: Los Angeles Dodgers vs Chicago Cubs

sirsean:

Tuesday, in downtown Chicago, the city threw a parade for the Cubs making the playoffs, celebrating wildly. Meanwhile, the White Sox were preparing for a game starting in mere hours that could send them to the playoffs — and downtown paid no heed while the local media grumbled about how they’d better not lose this thing. How can the Cubs be congratulated so passionately for simply making the playoffs, while at the same time the White Sox are simply required to make it? I predict bad things for the Cubs due to this premature celebration.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers have Manny Ramirez on their team, and I seem to recall that Joe Torre had some success in the past in the playoffs when he had talented young position players complemented by slugging veterans — as opposed to the failure he experienced in the playoffs when he had a team consisting of expensive slugging veterans complemented by expensive mediocre veterans. Plus, Manny doesn’t have a contract, and Boras wants to make money — so Manny will hit and hit and hit. Be prepared for Wrigley to yield several Manny-bombs in this series.

FunBobby:

The Cubs have a very well balanced team. Good starters with Dempster-Zambrano-Harden-Lilly, and the duo of Carlos Marmol and Kerry Wood out of the bullpen can really lock opponents down at the end of a game. Jeff Smardijizia has stepped up as a good reliever to take the stress off of the aforementioned duo.

The lineup is solid from top to bottom, with Soriano, Lee, Ramirez and Soto doing the heavy lifting. Lee and Soriano have a good amount of playoff experience, and I think Lou Pinella will do a very good job of making sure the young guys (and guys who have never been there) will keep focused.

The Dodgers rotation doesn’t impress me very much. Derek Lowe is slated to start game one, followed by Chad Billingsley and Hiroki Kuroda. Greg Maddux or Derek Lowe on three days rest will pitch game four if necessary.

Manny is great, but outside of him I don’t think the Cubs will have too many issues. Russell Martin is a solid player who I like a lot, and their group of young outfielders is impressive, but not sure how they will handle the pressure and the excellent pitching the Cubs will be trotting out there inning after inning. I think Joe Torre can win them one game.

sirsean’s take: Dodgers in five.

FunBobby’s take: Cubs in four. The Dodgers get one in LA.

NLDS: Milwaukee Brewers vs Philadelphia Phillies

sirsean:

It took more good work by the Mets this season to allow this matchup to happen. Their lead this year was only 6.5 games with 17 to play (as opposed to 7 games last year), but this time around they managed to collapse just enough to let two teams pass them. No thanks to Johan Santana, who did not contribute to the team’s collapse, throwing a shutout on the second to last day of the season, on short rest, after throwing a career high 125 pitches in his last start. Johan Santana is not a team player. (Where team == Mets.)

CC Sabathia, however, is a team player, and he carried the Brewers to the playoffs on his hefty shoulders. Pitching on short rest three times in a row to ensure a playoff spot is the stuff legends are made of, and CC is doing it. Former manager Ned Yost took a lot of heat for the way he rode CC, and interim replacement Dale Sveum hasn’t changed a thing. The Brewers back Sabathia up with a powerful young lineup featuring Ryan Braun and Prince Fielder; expect them to score runs against the Phillies.

Speaking of the Phillies, they’re no slouches either when it comes to scoring runs, especially when Ryan Howard realizes that it’s late in the season, which means “MVP Time” in his Subway-sandwich-selling world. With a lineup featuring Jimmy Rollins, Chase Utley, and Pat the Bat Burrell, Howard and company expect to score; and they need to given that their pitching staff could generously be described as “leaky.”

FunBobby:

I don’t really know much about these two teams, other than Ryan Howard reminds me of Happy Gillmore when he is in those Subway ads. Both have offenses that can score runs (they both seem to be built more like an AL team than the Twins). CC is starting game two for the Brew Crew, so he might be able to pitch twice. No Ben Sheets is a real blow to the Beermakers, so the rest of their rotation will consist of Dave Bush, Yovani Gallardo (who missed most of the season), Manny Parra (who Prince tried to beat up), and Jeff Suppan. Gallardo is set for game one, followed by CC, then its up in the air. The Phillies counter with Cole Hamels-Brett Myers-and the ageless Jamie Moyer. I’ll have to give the edge to the Brewers here, only because of CC. He seems to be an unstoppable force right now.

The Phillies have the far superior bullpen. They have the second lowest bullpen ERA in the NL. Brad Lidge will get a few Cy Young votes, and to get our former Twins fix, JC Romero is one of their lefties. I’m not sure how they plan on using Joe Blanton-as a starter or a reliever. i agree with sirsean, the Phillies have a questionable rotation at best, but their bullpen should be able to get them out of some jams.

sirsean’s take: I can’t go against the magic of CC, even though he’s only pitching one game in this series (probably … but don’t count him out). I’m going with the Brewers in four games.

FunBobby’s take: I’m going Brewers in five. That is more of a guess than anything.

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end
It hurts to set you free
But you’ll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die
– The Doors

Well folks, that’s it. The dream is dead, the season is over, this is the end. We’ve finally successfully given the division away, proving that we did indeed want it less.

Mauer finished his season 0-3, stumbling to the batting title as embarrassingly as possible. Morneau finished in a 10-59 slump, sacrificing the MVP trophy to the hated Red Sox. The rest of the cast of characters … just as bad, just more anonymous.

The only thing good about this game was that Blackburn looked great, holding the White Sox to one run in 6.1 innings, and that one run game on a 10,000 foot home run by Jim Thome in the seventh inning. He looked great. This game was not Blackburn’s fault. And I’m absolutely not confident we would have done anything better if this game were at the dome. We just didn’t hit. We didn’t show up.

Visions of warm champagne were filling our heads as we flailed at pitches and choked as hard as we know how.

But now that the season is over, we can finally consider the fact that this is better than anyone (other than myself — my World Series prediction died hard tonight) thought this season would be. This was supposed to be a rebuilding year. Cuddyer’s t-shirts with “162+” on them were thought to be a joke to get the guys to play hard in a down year — but who could have known just how cruel that message would be in the end?

It’s too soon to look forward to next season; instead, it’s the right time to sit back and reflect on the good times. It doesn’t seem like it now, but there were plenty. Seriously. Close your eyes.

Gomez hit for the cycle.

Mauer won a batting title.

Morneau finished 1 RBI behind Hamilton for the AL title.

Morneau won the home run derby over the very same Hamilton.

Slowey threw two shutouts.

Liriano appeared to get his stuff back.

Jose Mijares emerged as a future setup man.

Baker can handle pressure.

Keep thinking. It was a good season. We could have won another game or two here or there and got into the playoffs, but so could the White Sox — let’s not play that game. It’s a loser’s game.

But this is the end of laughter. This is the end of the last night when our dreams died.

Game 163 is scheduled to start at 6:30 tonight, in Chicago (which is a travesty I won’t address again).  The white sox are starting John Danks against the Twins’ Nick Blackburn.  Both starters have pretty ugly numbers against the opponent. Danks is pitching on three days rest, while Blackburn is pitching on five days rest.  Danks has terrible numbers while on three days rest, and given the total number of innings he has pitched this year and given his relative inexperience this can’t help him.  That extra day should help Blackburn because he is in the same boat. High innings total, young arm, etc.  Not sure what else to think.  Guillen used four relievers yesterday (Thorton, Dotel, Linebrink and Jenks) I’m guessing most of them will be available today since none pitched more than one inning. I think Thorton only faced a few batters, so I’m sure he will be asked to come in and get Mauer-Morneau out at some point late in the game.

I think this game will be close, but I honestly don’t like our chances. We play like children on the road, and Blackburn has been pretty unimpressive in his last few starts. Especially the ones on the road.  Will gardy start Cuddyer against the lefthanded starter instead of Kubel at DH?  Probably. Not sure if that is wise considering the do or die nature of this game.  Also, I think the game is on TBS, not sure if it will be on FSN as well. 

Go Twins.

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!