Moving Day

[stringer bell]

On the PGA tour, they call the Saturday round of golf "moving day", because players can move a long way up or down the leaderboard setting the stage for a high-stakes finish on Sunday. Tomorrow is moving day for the Twins IMHO. They currently trail the second wild card by one game and are tied in the loss column. Two teams behind them are within a couple of games and one of them is their opponent for tomorrow's split doubleheader.

 

Consider if the Twins were to manage to sweep the Angels while Cleveland and Houston also lost: Twins would hold the wild card edge by a half game over the Astros, they would be three games up on Los Angeles and three and a half ahead of Cleveland. They could be two and a half behind Houston, one game behind the Angels and only a half game ahead of Cleveland if all the results go the wrong way.

 

Outside of postseason, tomorrow will be the biggest single day of baseball since the advent of Target Field. This late in the season, a double loss might be the end while a sweep could propel them to a date at Yankee Stadium for a playoff game. As Donald Trump might say, tomorrow is uuuuuuge!

[DaveW]

1-1 is a must. 2-0 would be amazing.

 

SP needs to step up tomorrow. None of this getting pulled before the 6th garbage!

[DaveW]

Also Houston losing: a solid chance. Cleveland? They are on fire. Thankfully we still have two games up on them so all we have to do is sorta Come close to matching them down the stretch. (2 of 3 against them next week wouldn't hurt as well...)

[Brock Beauchamp]

Houston is in freefall. The second WC is ripe for the Angels and Twins to snatch away from the Astros.

 

Now we just need to find out which team wants it more.

[USAFChief]

With apologies to 'Weezie, looks liked we're movin' on down.

[Halsey Hall]

Reaching for the light switch. 

[DaveW]

It was moving day alright, just in the wrong direction

[glunn]

 

Houston is in freefall. The second WC is ripe for the Angels and Twins to snatch away from the Astros.

 

Now we just need to find out which team wants it more.

With all due respect, maybe this is a matter of nerves more than desire.  

 

It's not that hard to walk a balance beam when it's a foot off the ground.  But most people be rattled if the beam was 10 or 20 feet off the ground.  Even an Olympic balance beam champion might be reluctant to walk across the Grand Canyon.

 

In some cases, I think that the players who want it the most can be rattled by the pressure.  For them, too much desire might result in playing too tight.  Does that make sense?

 

[Platoon]

The younger players seem to be carrying whatever hope the Twins have. And Hunter and Suzuki have had a little spurt. But most of the other veterans have not held up their end of the bargain. If nothing else, I hope this puts to bed the argument that player so and so can not be traded because his metrics say he is the ? best at his position. To me that's the biggest weakness about metrics, there's a huge difference when you pile up statistics. As for the pitching, likely more of the same. The two most reliable in the middle of the chase have been Gibson and Duffey. May has been fairly steady out of the pen. Most of the expensive vets, meh! Fortunately the Twins have pieces to put together a really good team for quite a few years to come, and to possibly stockpile a few replacement parts for the future. The decisions they make this winter, win or lose the WC chase, will be far more important than the next two weeks toward their future success.

[AlwaysinModeration]

Seems like we might have ourselves one of these here moving days today. Could end today tied for the Wild Card lead with the Angels, ahead of Houston. Could end today 3 back with 4 to play.

 

I think 3-4 Sano home runs today would go a long way towards the Twins wild card chances.

[stringer bell]

 

Seems like we might have ourselves one of these here moving days today. Could end today tied for the Wild Card lead with the Angels, ahead of Houston. Could end today 3 back with 4 to play.

I think 3-4 Sano home runs today would go a long way towards the Twins wild card chances.

To quote the late, great Yogi "it's deja vu all over again". Hopefully the results will be better than a week ago Saturday. But if they aren't maybe we'll see Buxton and Kepler in the outfield.

[Linus]

Well, today is likely to be the most telling day of the year. Two vastly different outcomes possible.

[Hosken Bombo Disco]

It's like a little league tournament--- win the first game today, and we get to play another one right after it, and do a lot of peeking over at the other field to see how the orange team is doing.  

 

Lose both games today, and we all drive home tonight grumpy and tired.