Just when you think that the biggest issue facing the Twins and their pitchers is who’s going to start Friday night’s game against Kansas City — Liriano, Manship, Blyleven or Ron Davis — this thing called outdoor baseball bites the Twins in the butt and plays havoc with any kind of planning.

It remains to be seen whether Monday’s rainout is the only wrinkle thrown into the schedule during this week’s series in Detroit. If both games are played today, the Twins will put in a 10-hour workday and then have a good sense of how much the remaining games mean when they’re finished with Rick Porcello and Justin Verlander, who will be solid candidates for Rookie of the Year and Cy Young respectively.

Beat ‘em both and the Twins are tied for first with the weaker end of the Tigers’ rotation being thrown at them Wednesday and Thursday.  The Twins pretty much have to win 3 of 4 against Detroit, given that the Tigers aren’t likely to be swept by the White Sox and the Twins have another encounter scheduled with Zack Greinke.

A sweep would be hellacious, but you don’t talk out loud about such things. (That’s why people ask for a 6 at the blackjack table when they need a 7 to hit 21.)

I’m pretty much at a loss right now when it comes to figuring out how the Twins starting pitching would set up for the rest of the season, whether or not they can get through the next three days without rain messing with them even more. I mentioned to Ms. Baseball on Sunday — during the latest batch of Liriano troubles — that it wouldn’t bother me if Gardy started Jesse Crain on Friday to see how far he can go and them have a half-dozen arms ready to follow him. At the same time, though, Crain hasn’t given up a run in his last 15 games (15 innings, 10 baserunners, 9 strikeouts) and I can make a case for him being ready to pitch relief three or four times in these final seven games.

I could think that one out loud until your eyes glaze … and then follow up with wondering whether Gardy would start Blackburn or Duensing on three days of rest on Saturday against Greinke.

If those are meaningful decisions, it will mean that the Twins have done themselves well in Detroit, which is the issue of the moment. And for each big decision that Gardy would need to make, Jim Leyland will have to do the same for the Tigers.

Go away, rain. Let’s get at it.

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?

Perhaps no more puzzling venom was directed at a Twins player earlier this year than some of the outrage directed toward Michael B. Cuddyer. Maybe it was because he does magic tricks or maybe it’s because he’s better lookin’ than most folks who sit at their computers and comment on blogs. Or maybe it was a conspiracy between the number munchers to show how deeply they could drill into new-wave statistics to find damning evidence and the gut-feeling crowd who simply wanted to go young (or Young) as in a regular outfield of Delmon, Carlos and Denard. Or maybe it was a bitter Lew Ford posting under an assortment of names and personalities, which wouldn’t surprise me as much as if, say, Jason Tyner tried to do something like that.

Whatever the case — and I bear no ongoing malice toward contrarian opinions — I felt the need back in May to devote two consecutive posts to a defense of Cuddyer.

On May 21, I wrote, in part:

Going back through some comments of recent days, you might think that Michael Cuddyer is the main reason the Twins have lost six in a row, the starters can’t locate their pitches, the bullpen has been a disaster in key situations and the little things kept getting done wrong. That’s the same Cuddyer who is batting .310/.430/.535 over his last 20 games and has the highest OPS on the team except for three guys named Mauer, Morneau and Kubel.

He has seemed to run afoul of the baseball socialists who seem to think that others should be getting a chance based on unmined potential or some of the numbers that can be found if you drill down deep enough into the statosphere. Some people seem to be making the leap that he should be benched because he’s overpaid — at least that’s the argument I’ve been extracting from a quick review of their words. I like numbers. I like the ones that I cite and I’m intrigued by the numbers that some of you bring up. But here’s a simple contention: If more Twins were producing like Cuddyer, the Twins could make even Terry Felton a winning pitcher.

After an interesting conversation-booster from commenter Jason — “The $8.5 million Cuddyer is making this year comes in part from your season ticket money to sit in 220, Howard. From that standpoint, I would think you would be curious … at the questioning of how that investment is paying off.” – I offered up the following on the issue of the return on my investment:

Cuddyer? His OPS+ right now is 124, the same as in his best season of 2006 … and I’ll take that from him. It’s a big improvement over last season’s injury-hampered 92. and better than his career figure of 107.  For the season, I’d be very happy if he performed in the 110-120 range. (It’s early enough in the season that yesterday’s performance moved his OPS+ from 112 to 124, kind of like a huge day in the market.) I’m not going to put him on my All-Star ballot right now, but I’ll make the argument that Cuddyer’s a solid player who has deserved his at-bats. That he’s making $6.75 million this season (or $7.67 million if you want to throw in one-third of his signing bonus) doesn’t bother me.

Here are links to the full posts:

May 21: Another loss? All Cuddyer’s fault, I suppose.

May 22: Player value from a fan’s perspective.

The best part wasn’t that I was so incredibly right about Cuddyer — the animosity has shrunk to a fringe effort that calls itself, I believe, the Justin Huber Liberation and Libation Society — but that it provoked about 450 comments over two days that were mostly evidence of value for this kind of discussion on the internet. That doesn’t include the guy who offered up, during the May 21 day game: “Howard, your boyfriend flied out on the 2nd pitch with runners on 1st and 3rd.”

That was before Cuddyer went 4-for-6 with a home run and a double that afternoon in Chicago and hit for the cycle the next night against Milwaukee.

Some of your concession speeches were downright flattering.

More satisfying, however, is that Cuddyer is having a year even better than I was willing to give him credit for six weeks into the season — and has stepped up to fill the Morneau void, both in the batting order and on defense, when it was vital to do so.

And if you buy the argument that Cuddyer’s performance has been key to keeping the Twins in the title chase, you can also give him some credit for enhancing Joe Mauer’s chances to win the American League MVP award. If the Twins were doing a White Sox fade right now, it would lend strength to the arguments that Mauer has been most outstanding without being most valuable.

At this point, however, in baseball’s only serious title chase (regardless of the division’s weakness), Mauer’s singular performance makes him such an obvious choice that the only reason for debate is to fill time in the 24/7 sports universe. But the Mauer-for-MVP question will have to wait for another day.

Today, it’s all about Cuddyer (and me).

Not much to write today except to hope for the best in Chicago while rooting for Cleveland not to pack it in against the Tigers. Then, if it still matters, Twins fans become White Sox fans over the final two weekends of the season. It’s so much more complicated when you have to rely on other teams to conspire with you — a situation that should have been avoided this season. But this is no time for shoulds.

There would have been a lot to write about if the Twins had won on Sunday and cut the Tigers’ lead to one game. The Vikings, winners of two games against teams that will likely finish the season with a combined 4-28 record, would probably be secondary to the surging Twins. Didn’t happen. Not going to replay it here.

There’s a school of thought that says winning the title with a late surge would be a bad thing because it keep the Twins from righting the things that need to be fixed before moving outdoors next season. I mean, no matter how well Cabrera and Punto hold down the middle infield over the final couple of weeks, neither is an answer for what lies ahead. And third base-by-paperclip won’t cut it, either. (I will refrain jumping into the Danny Valencia debate because I don’t know enough to contribute and, whatever the case, relying on a rookie who has struggled at Class AAA doesn’t seem especially wise. Yes, I know that Denard Span’s the exception.)

There’s also thought, expressed by Jim Souhan this morning, that the best sendoff for the Dome would be a one-game playoff and then out — sparing the Twins a trip to New York to play the Yankees in the opening round of the playoffs. I understand the logic there.

Having played horses once in a while, however, I am a fan of what handicapper Andrew Beyer calls “the logic of illogic,” which is one of those tools that, every now and again, leads to putting money on a horse that doesn’t seem to have any chance from breaking down the numbers. Under this scenario, everything still breaks against the Twins — opponents, pitching, offense, home field, history, you name it — and somehow they find a way to win three games in the first round before the Yankees do.

I am not suggesting a Vegas play here or even spending too much intellectual energy on figuring out ways the Twins can get past the Tigers and flourish in the playoffs. What if the when-pigs-fly scenario comes true and Carl Pavano gets to chat with the New York media after shutting down the Yankees?

Just take things for what they are — and what they could possibly be, however remote the possibility. It’s better than holding your breath.

I think we can all agree that the Twins have slithered and withered through a season in which we could have easily expected them to be 10 games better than they are right now, which would give them a pretty comfortable lead in the Tri-Metro Conference of major league baseball. And for those of us who had given them up for roadkill in recent weeks, we were justified in doing so based on the problems the Twins haven’t been able to remedy throughout this frustrating season. And, yes, there are an assortment of issues that need to be addressed during the winter regardless of whether or not the Twins somehow find themselves as one of the eight teams playing October baseball.

All of that being said, it’s time to roll with the excitement of this weekend, put aside the quibbles/distress/understandable skepticism and get ready for some games that matter.

The Tigers are coming to town with a four-game lead and on a 10-game skid of terrible baseball. One of the office skeptics at the Star Tribune wandered by my desk a few days and said, in a hushed tone, “I think they’re gonna win the division.”

Might as well.

It’s the last hurrah at the  house of plastic, time for Twins fans to assert themselves by playing up the silly home-field advantage one more time and — more importantly — time for the Twins be the sum of their parts instead of talking about giving 110 percent and playing only about 75.

Baseball is a game when someone can play above their head for a few weeks and make a name for himself that can’t be backed up when you look at the sum of a career.

In the Twins case, in the here and now, such a player is the blogging poster child for player abuse — Nick Punto. Yes, kids, while you’ve been getting excited over Brett Favre and wondering when Macalester will win a football game, Mr. Punto has put together a .366 average and .422 on-base percentage over his last 14 games. That changes little about the big picture, but makes all arguments about who should be playing second base right now ridiculously moot.

There’s really nothing we can do right now about Delmon Young’s .285 OBP or the .274 OBP that Orlando Cabrera has put together since joining the Twins. In the big picture, looking at 2010 and beyond, this is a team that needs to address its middle infield (and middle relief and third base and Joe Mauer’s contract and a couple of other things). In the here and now, you need to hope they play above their heads for the rest of ‘09 while the Tigers continue spinning downward. While you can give the Twins front office grief for big-picture inertia, give  credit for not burdening the team with Jarrod Washburn ( 7.33 ERA in eight starts since joining the Tigers and now sidelined) and Freddy Sanchez (.290 OBP and a DL stint in San Francisco).

The Twins aren’t who we thought they would be this season. But to look the gift horse of a title chase in the mouth and spit contemptuously seems self-defeating. Yes, it could all blow up this weekend and Detroit could leave town with a seven-game lead that would make most of these words look silly.

Right now, though, saddle up and enjoy the ride. As morose as this team has sometimes made me, that’s my plan.

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Update: If you’re doing the k-bro Food Shelf challenge – two items of food for every Twins win in September and one for every Detroit loss in September, your current count is 24 items (or $48 in donations, if you use the Section 220 conversion guide). Not too late to get on board with that one. Hoping to be at 33 items/$66 by Sunday night.