Well, if the Twins win their final 10 games — which would end the season with 13 straight victories — they would win the AL Central no matter what, because that would mean sweeping the Tigers in Detroit next week.

It would also mean:

*Beating the (current) rightful Cy Young favorite Zack Greinke twice, most likely in match-ups in which he faces Francisco Liriano — the 2009 version not the2006.

*Handling the hot Robinson Tejada tonight. He’s given up two runs in 22 1.3 innings since moving from the bullpen to the rotation.

*Beating JustinJason Verlander on Tuesday in Detroit. The Twins will apparently miss Edwin Jackson, who will start Sunday for the Tigers, unless he gets brought back on three days of rest. Would Jim Leyland do that if the Twins win the first three games of the series if his other choice is to dip into the bullpen?

*Putting aside all the hoopla about the “final” weekend at the Dome and hope that next Sunday’s game is only the final regular-season game.

Any other positive result would require help from the White Sox, who play the Tigers in their six remaining games not against the Twins. Given the way the White Sox seem to fade in and out about playing with any kind of intensity, I can’t imagine that much help with come from them.  The White Sox played the Twins like a team that only seemed to care about things when they were easy.

The Twins also have to contend with the curse of Freddy Garcia, the journeyman who started Game 162 for the Tigers last season, when they needed him to handle the White Sox, and will be starting for Chicago on Saturday.

So far, this has been a frustrating week for scoreboard watching. Cleveland finally put some offense on Detroit in their series finally, leading for a half-inning early and then rallying within one in the bottom of the ninth before fizzling to its 11th straight loss.

The Twins have a steep incline over the next week-and-a-half, and if they lose even a small amount of traction it’ll be time to be thinking more about baseball outdoors than baseball in October.

Nothing like a little pressure, huh?

This entry was posted on Friday, September 25th, 2009 at 11:06 am and is filed under Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.