Gassing Guerrier (Again!)

Something is wrong with Matt Guerrier.

Well, let's backtrack a bit. Last night, Francisco Liriano dueled with Max Scherzer over seven innings in the type of game that bores casual fans but delights hardcores. Both pitchers were at the top of their game; Scherzer mowed down the Twins hitters for nine impressive frames but hiccuped in the sixth inning and yielded a single run, while Liriano executed big pitches and performed well enough to exit after the seventh with a 1-0 lead.

It's a shame that Ron Gardenhire, a man whose bullpen management I typically commend, felt the need to engage in a needless chess match with his relievers that ultimately cost Liriano a win and could have cost the Twins the game.

With Liriano gassed after seven innings, Gardenhire rightfully turned to his best reliever, Jesse Crain, to start the eighth. Crain gave up a lead-off single to Austin Jackson but then got Will Rhymes to pop out on a bunt attempt. With one out and the tying run on first, and lefty-swinging Johnny Damon due up, Gardy decided to flex his managerial muscle and counter the Detroit lefty with one of his own. He turned to Randy Flores. The manager was ostensibly playing the percentages, but Flores has not proven to be a particularly effective weapon against lefties (certainly not more effective than Crain, whose devastating slider baffles hitters from both sides) and Damon doesn't have much of a platoon split.

Gardenhire's move completely fizzled when Jim Leyland subbed lefty-mashing righty Ryan Raburn to face the southpaw. Fortunately, Flores was able to get a strikeout anyway. With MVP candidate Miguel Cabrera stepping in and representing the tying run, Gardenhire elected to turn to Matt Guerrier.

This is where he lost me.

I could understand the reasoning behind Gardy's prior moves in the inning. Tying run on base, you want to get the lefty-lefty match-up, maybe preserve Crain a little bit... sure, you use Flores. But when I saw Gardenhire call upon Guerrier from the bullpen, I shook my head. Guerrier hasn't been effective lately, and he'd worked in three of the team's past five games. Why not let him rest a little? I wondered to myself (and to my tweeps) why the team was unwilling to turn to Matt Capps for a four-out save. They traded one of their best prospects for the guy, you'd think they'd be willing to trust him to come in and get one extra out against the opposing team's best hitter.

As I questioned the decision, I decided to put my perception that Guerrier has been struggling to the test. So I looked up his numbers since the All-Star break. His ERA sat at 4.50 -- not too bad. He'd allowed only 15 hits and five walks in 20 innings, which is actually quite good. Then I looked at this strikeouts. He had four. Guerrier has struck out four of the 76 batters he'd faced since the All-Star break.

He came into the game, walked Miguel Cabrera, gave up a game-tying RBI single to Jhonny Peralta and then got Brandon Inge to ground out and end the inning. That pushes Guerrier's post-break total to 79 batters with only four strikeouts.

Guerrier has never been a strikeout artist, but that type of minuscule whiff rate makes Nick Blackburn look good. It's irresponsible to repeatedly trust a guy that's allowing contact that frequently high-leverage late-game situations. Yet, Gardenhire continues to do it, and did it again last night.

That appearance marked Guerrier's 62nd of the season, which ranks him third in the American League. Guerrier is being used more than almost any other reliever in the league, and he's breaking down late in the season. We've seen this exact story before. More than once.

It's one lesson that Gardenhire just refuses to learn. Brian Fuentes' unavailability puts the Twins' manager in a bit of a bind, but there was no reason he really needed to use Guerrier last night and he should be taking any possible opportunity to rest him because at this point the righty reliever isn't fooling anybody and it's hard to believe his taxed arm isn't running on fumes.

No Ordinary Rookie

Their bats went into a bit of a slumber during the team's most recent road trip, but the Twins have still boasted one of the most prolific offenses in baseball since the All-Star break. Most impressively, they've done it without the services of their best hitter, as Justin Morneau remains sidelined by the lingering effects of a concussion suffered in early July.

Several players have stepped up in Morneau's absence to keep the offense on track, most notably Joe Mauer and Jim Thome. One perhaps underappreciated contributor to the team's success, however, is the kid who has taken over at third base.

Few knew what to expect from Danny Valencia when he was called up from Triple-A in early June to provide depth while Michael Cuddyer was away on bereavement. It was expected, at the time, that Valencia would be with the team for only a short period of time and that Cuddyer would return to third base indefinitely. Valencia was, after all, having a rather unremarkable season in the minors (he'd posted a .720 OPS with zero home runs in 49 games at Rochester) and the organization was understandably wary about relying on such an unproven commodity amidst a heated pennant race.

Valencia began to make an impact immediately, collecting hits in nine of his first 11 big-league starts. When Morneau went down on July 7, the plan of using Cuddyer at third base ceased to be palatable (not that it was anywhere close to ideal to begin with), and so the team looked to Valencia, owner of only 48 major-league at-bats, to take over at the hot corner.

Take over he has. Since the day Morneau went down, Valencia has started 40 of the team's 47 games at third base, including the last 35 in a row. During that span, he's hit .329/.368/.489. He's struck out only 19 times in 163 plate appearances. His defense at third base has been outstanding, as he's run up a 5.2 UZR while committing only three errors in 58 games.

Had Valencia not stepped up and proven a capable regular at third base, it's frightening to think where this team might be. Brendan Harris was so terrible early in the season that he was designated for assignment. Nick Punto hasn't been able to keep himself off the disabled list late in the season. Cuddyer has been needed at first, and probably will be for the remainder of the year. Had Valencia struggled in his initial taste of the majors -- as many expected he would, since he often took a few months to adjust to heightened levels of competition in the minors -- it's possible we'd be looking at Matt Tolbert as the club's regular third baseman right now. Or else, Bill Smith might have been forced to part with valuable assets at the deadline out of desperation for a replacement. Heck, maybe they'd have even called Joe Crede to see if he could hobble out to the field for a couple months.

Fortunately, none of that was necessary, because Valencia has been a revelation at third base. He has also provided hope that he can be a long-term answer at a position that has been a peristent liability for the Twins ever since Corey Koskie's departure. Over the past five years, the Twins have shuffled through Cuddyer, Punto, Crede, Harris, Brian Buscher, Tony Batista and Mike Lamb at third base, and never come up with a remotely suitable solution. Valencia's excellent debut suggests that he could be a competent, durable and cheap answer at the hot corner for years to come. That last factor weighs heavily, since the Twins' significant payroll commitments to core players leave them needing to save money in other spots.

To be clear, I don't expect Valencia to continue to be a .330 hitter going forward. He hit .289 in the minors and hadn't posted a mark over .300 since he was in Single-A back in early 2008. Keep in mind that Valencia has always been a streaky player and we've yet to see a cold streak, so chances are we're seeing his numbers at a high point. His offensive production since joining the Twins has been propped up by an unsustainably high .363 batting average on balls in play and if you take away seven of his singles (less than one per week), his hitting line drops from .328/.373/.446 to a much more ordinary .294/.341/.412, which would register as only slightly above average production for an AL third baseman.

Unless Valencia can add some patience and/or power to his game, that type of performance is probably his long-term upside. But that's hardly an indictment, because the Twins would love for a player who can give them cheap, average production over the next few years. And there's certainly no saying Valencia can't improve the aforementioned aspects of his game. He's improved over time at nearly every level and while he's never been a true power hitter, his low home run output this year (only two bombs in 418 plate appearances between the majors and minors) has been an anomaly in the context of his career. While watching him drive the ball deep twice last night, including one crucial RBI double to center that closed the gap late, I found myself in disbelief that the kid has only gotten the ball over the fence twice all season.

But, homers or not, it was fun to watch him drive the baseball and jump-start the offense in an exciting comeback victory. Both at the plate and in the field, Valencia looks like a natural. Hopefully we'll have the pleasure of watching him man third for many years to come.

"Keep Your Eye On the Ball"

It's that generic piece of coaching advice that any ballplayer has surely heard barked at them hundreds of times on the field. Yet, as many times as the phrase has been uttered, it remains one of the sport's quintessential doctrines. There's just nothing more frustrating then seeing an infielder bobble away a routine ground ball because his eyes were already busy sizing up the next move.

After taking two of three from the Mariners this weekend while the White Sox dropped the second and third of their three-game set with the Yankees, the Twins now hold a 4 1/2 game lead in the AL Central with 31 games left to play. The White Sox have lost six of their last seven series and have the look of an imploding team, their frustration embodied by a manager who managed to get ejected from a game after taking about three steps out of the dugout yesterday. According to the website CoolStandings.com, which assesses playoff odds through a complex calculation, the Twins currently have an 87.6 percent chance of making the postseason.

Things look good, especially with a nine-game home stand on tap. But it's important to stay focused on the present. I know I myself have been guilty of looking forward, as I have written recently about the importance of securing home field advantage for an ALDS match-up and about the possible makeup of a Twins playoff rotation. I'm not naive enough to believe that I'm going to jinx the club by acknowledging their strong odds for a division title (and I really, truly hope you're not either), but nothing is guaranteed.

Last year on this date, it was the Twins who were 4 1/2 games out of first place. A week later, they were a full seven games out. Heck, they were three games back with four left to play. But a spectacular September run allowed them to surge past the scuffling Tigers and snatch the division right out of Detroit's grasp.

Some folks are discounting the White Sox entirely because of their recently uninspiring play, but it's never wise to judge a team amidst a slump. The Twins entered the month of September last year with a record only one game over .500. That didn't stop them from winning 21 of their final 32 games. There's no denying that the Sox have hit a rough patch lately, but this is largely the same club that went 36-17 in June and July, rattling off one 11-game winning streak and another nine-gamer (exactly the kind of runs that could put them right back in the AL Central mix). Oh, except now they have Manny Ramirez.

White Sox GM Kenny Williams acquired the veteran slugger from the Dodgers on a waiver claim over the weekend. The move represents a bold statement by the White Sox, who will assume responsibility for the remainder of Ramirez's sizable salary (a little over $4M for just a few dozen games) with the hopes that he can rejuvenate their fledgling lineup. Certainly, Ramirez represents a dramatic improvement at a DH position which has been a year-long liability for Chicago, where Mark Kotsay's name had become a running joke on the South Side.

It's true that Ramirez's numbers have slipped over the past couple years and his output no longer qualifies him as one of the game's truly elite sluggers, but when I size up this move by the Sox I can't help but remember the 2008 season, when a 36-year-old Ramirez rediscovered his motivation after a deadline trade to the Dodgers, posting a 1.232 OPS with 17 homers and 53 RBI in LA's final 53 regular-season games and then propelling the team to the NLCS with a monstrous postseason performance.

Yeah, Manny is now two years older. And his demeanor by the end of his stay in Los Angeles made it clear he just didn't give a damn anymore. (Ramirez came on as a pinch-hitter with the bases loaded during a game over the weekend and was ejected for arguing a called first strike.) But what is he capable of these days when he does give a damn?

Ultimately, Ramirez isn't going to single-handedly add several games to Chicago's win total, and the White Sox have an awfully steep hill to climb one way or another. But as, the 2009 Tigers learned, it is folly to count out a pesky second-place team with a month left to play, even if the odds weigh heavily in your favor.

Post-Waiver Wizard Waves Wand Again

During Terry Ryan's lengthy tenure as Twins' GM, I don't recall one significant trade being made after the July 31 non-waiver deadline within a season. That's not to say it never happened, but nothing stands out to me. Ryan was occasionally (but not often) aggressive in late July, but that was generally the extent of this team's involvement in the mid-season trade market.

To say things have changed under Bill Smith would be an understatement. Last year, Smith made a move at the deadline, acquiring Athletics shortstop Orlando Cabrera, but that was hardly his best trade of the season. In August, he was able to acquire Carl Pavano from the Indians and later Jon Rauch from the Diamondbacks. Both helped the Twins to a late postseason berth and both have stuck around to play valuable roles this year as the Twins have built up a 3.5 game lead in the AL Central nearing September.

This year, Smith once again made a move near the deadline, acquiring Nationals closer Matt Capps to replace a stumbling Jon Rauch, and yesterday he once again managed to out-do that non-waiver deal with an August trade that could prove more meaningful. Smith sent a player to be named later to the Angels for their own closer, Brian Fuentes.

Fuentes won't close in Minnesota, where the Twins have made a significant investment in Capps by trading one of their top prospects for him. Instead, Fuentes will take over as the team's top left-handed specialist and will serve alongside Jesse Crain to set up Capps in the ninth.

The Twins underwhelmed me and many others last week when they responded to losing both Jose Mijares and Ron Mahay in a short span of time by adding mediocre left-hander Randy Flores to the bullpen. It's not that Flores is a terrible reliever, but adding a player like him doesn't seem like the move of a team aggressively pursuing a championship. Conversely, adding Fuentes seems exactly like that type of move. Fuentes, in his prime, was one of the league's best relievers, registering a 3.04 ERA and 1.16 WHIP -- along with a 302-to-105 strikeout-to-walk ratio -- in 263 2/3 innings while racking up 111 saves as Colorado's closer between the 2005 and 2008 seasons.

That track record led the Angels to sign him prior to the 2009 season as a replacement for Francisco Rodriguez, who had priced himself out of the team's desired range by setting a single-season MLB saves record in 2008. The move proved sound and helped remind us of how the closer role can be overrated; Fuentes' numbers were thoroughly unimpressive (3.93 ERA, 1.40 WHIP, 3.9 BB/9IP, career-low 7.5 K/9IP) and yet he still managed to make the All-Star team and notch a league-leading 48 saves.

Fuentes, now 35, isn't quite the elite reliever he was during those prime years with the Rockies and he's now miscast as a closer. As a set-up man specializing in shutting down left-handed hitters, though, you can't do a whole lot better. He's been almost untouchable against lefties this season, holding them to a minuscule .377 OPS, and over the course of his career he's held port-siders to a .213 average. He's also good enough against righties that he can be used as a straight eighth-inning guy, which differentiates him from the likes of Mahay and (to a lesser extent) Mijares, who tended to struggle when exposed to right-handed hitters.

Crain and Fuentes figure to be one of the league's best set-up combos in front of Capps, reminiscent to the shut-down duo of Pat Neshek and Matt Guerrier in 2007 and other dominating back-end relief combos from earlier in the decade. While both relievers struggled a bit in the early months of the season, they've both been insanely hot since turning the corner around the summer's mid-point; since June 20, Crain owns a 0.34 ERA and is holding opponents to a .141 average, while Fuentes owns a 1.41 ERA and is holding opponents to a .159 average.

If those two can continue to pitch the way they have over the past two months, the Twins will have the luxury of pushing Matt Guerrier and Jon Rauch (and, eventually, Jose Mijares) into middle-inning roles. While that trio has struggled in recent weeks, they're hardly bad -- in fact, early in the season, they were the team's top three high-leverage options. If they can return to form, this bullpen will sport some impressive depth as the Twins move forward down the stretch and (hopefully) into the postseason. If not, well, fortunately Ron Gardenhire will no longer have to rely on them to get key outs late in games.

I think the acquisition of Fuentes clearly upgrades the Twins bullpen and helps strengthen them for the stretch run. Ultimately, whether or not this is a good deal for the Twins will hinge on which prospect they end up losing. Considering that general managers tend to overvalue the save statistic and Fuentes led the league in saves last season, the possibility certainly exists that the Twins could part with something valuable. However, it's already late August and the Angels had little use for Fuentes, who was earning $9 million this season. This has the look of a salary dump and while I suspect that the PTBNL might be a better player than many currently expect, I don't think it's going to be a hugely loss in the long run.

Fuentes has a vesting option for 2011 in his contract that activates if he finishes 55 games this year, but he currently sits at 33 so that's not going to happen. At season's end, he will become a free agent, along with Rauch, Guerrier, Crain and Mahay. The Twins will have some decisions to make at that point with Joe Nathan returning from Tommy John surgery, but for now they'll have the luxury of relying on a deep and strong bullpen for the remainder of the 2010 campaign.

Beyond the impact of the actual deal, I love the message that Smith and the Twins front office are setting by bringing in an established, proven player like Fuentes for the stretch run. This team is in it to win it, and they're not going to let a destabilizing bullpen stand in their way.

A Familiar Story

When Stephen Strasburg came up earlier this season, he took the league by storm. Whereas many young hurlers go through a sometimes lengthy adjustment period against the world's best hitters, Strasburg was immediately transcendent. He amazingly struck out 14 batters without issuing a walk in his major-league debut. As he moved forward, he continued to dominate opposing lineups, racking up strikeouts while turning in quality start after quality start. His stuff was amazing, allowing him to somehow make veteran star players look totally overmatched. The spectacle seemed like nothing I'd ever seen before.

Only, I had seen it before. In 2006, Francisco Liriano joined the Twins rotation with a similar air of dominance. In his first 12 starts, he went 10-2 with a 1.58 ERA and 83-to-22 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 79 2/3 innings. He wasn't quite the strikeout machine that Strasburg has been, but with his extreme ground ball tendencies, he was even more dominant than the Nationals phenom. If you don't believe me, compare the numbers.

Of course, Liriano's amazing rookie performance didn't carry the same level of hype as Strasburg, and for some good reasons. Liriano wasn't a No. 1 overall pick who'd rocketed through the minors in just a couple of months. He hadn't been widely labeled as the game's next great pitcher before he even threw a major-league pitch. Indeed, by the time Liriano joined Minnesota's rotation, he had already acclimated himself to the majors as a member of the Twins' bullpen, and had already accumulated nearly 500 innings in the minors whereas Strasburg was a 21-year-old with only 58 innings or professional experience.

Nevertheless, the devastation that struck Minnesota when it was learned late in that dazzling rookie campaign that Liriano had a torn ligament in his throwing arm and would require Tommy John surgery was eerily similar to the shock currently shaking the nation in the wake of Strasburg's own diagnosis this morning. Just like Liriano, Strasburg's torn ligament was discovered just over three months after he stepped into his team's rotation and began dominating. Just like the Twins, the Nationals will be forced to wait at least a year until their budding ace can return to action.

The blow is a little less severe for the Nationals from a competitive standpoint, as they're not tied up in a fierce postseason race like the Twins were and probably didn't have much of a shot at making the playoffs next year either. The blow to Washington's bottom line and fan base morale, however, is far more severe. Strasburg represented a shining beacon of hope for a franchise that has experienced little success in its six-year existence.


As a person who's been through this before, I wish I could offer words of comfort to those Nationals fans who are surely reeling from today's news. Unfortunately, I can't. The wait for Liriano to return to form was lengthy and frustrating. He first attempted to rejoin to the Twins at the outset of the 2008 season but struggled early on and spent several months in the minors while trying to regain his command. He ultimately returned to the Twins and pitched very well down the stretch, but wasn't the dominating force he was pre-surgery.

The 2009 season was a disaster. Liriano's control problems came to a forefront and he continually battle issues both physical and mental before finishing with a 5.80 ERA and 1.55 WHIP. It wasn't until this 2010 season -- a full three years removed from his surgery -- that Liriano has finally started to pitch like the elite starter he was prior to injuring his elbow. He showed that again last night in thoroughly outperforming one of the game's premier pitchers while helping the Twins pick up a big road victory.

That Liriano has finally returned to the front-line ace tier can be viewed as an encouraging sign for Nats fans; that it took as long as it did has to be harrowing. On the bright side, many starting pitchers have been able to make a full recovery from Tommy John surgery in a much shorter time span. Hopefully Strasburg can follow that path.

However, when I look at the stories of Strasburg and Liriano, I see a lot of similarities. For the sake of Nationals fans and baseball as a whole, let's hope the next chapter for Strasburg doesn't follow suit.

Lee and Liriano

As you might have heard, advanced statistics view Francisco Liriano quite highly this year. His combination of a high strikeout rate, high grounder rate and relatively strong walk rate have made him a sabermatrician's dream, as he ranks first in the majors with a 2.33 FIP and second only to Roy Halladay with a 3.00 xFIP (the latter metric penalizes Liriano slightly for what it views as an unsustainably low home run rate).

Of course, Liriano's actual results haven't been quite as strong as those figures would have us believe. He leads Twins starters with a 3.45 ERA but hasn't been quite the innings eater that, say, Carl Pavano has been. (Liriano has completed eight innings in a start only three times this year, while Pavs has done it nine times.)

The ability to regularly pitch deep into games is an extremely valuable skill. It is one that often eludes pitchers like Liriano, who throws very hard and often uses a high number of pitches in an effort to rack up strikeouts. Liriano is great, but he's not necessarily all that efficient, a flaw that is reflected in his less-than-stellar innings total and his unspectacular 1.28 WHIP.

That's what's so thoroughly impressive about the man who will toe the rubber opposite Liriano this evening. Cliff Lee also rates highly in most sabermetric categories, with a 2.55 FIP that ranks third in baseball and a 3.28 xFIP that ranks sixth. But he's also averaging well over an extra inning per start in comparison to Liriano. Lee has hurled seven complete games and averaged nearly eight innings per turn this season.


How does he do it? Durability is certainly a factor; Lee's arm doesn't wear down to the same degree as Liriano and he's routinely been pushed well past the 100-pitch mark this season. The key to Lee's approach, however, is his efficiency, rooted in the fact that he doesn't walk anybody. And I almost mean that literally. He's issued only 11 walks in 174 2/3 innings this year, and in that same span he's struck out 151 batters. That's good for a 13.7 strikeout-to-walk ratio that almost defies belief. The previous single-season record in the K/BB category is 11.0, set by Bret Saberhagen in 1994. Jim Whitney finished at 10.0 in 1884, an no other starting pitcher in major-league history has even managed a double-digit rate. What Lee's doing this year is historically amazing.

Liriano is special too, in his own way. He's one of baseball's best strikeout artists has amazingly allowed only thee home runs in 24 starts this year thanks to his ability to consistently keep the ball on the ground. His stuff is dazzling, but he's been susceptible to lapses in command, especially over the past couple weeks while he's been dealing with a bout of dead arm. Heck, in his last three starts, Liriano has issued more walks than Lee has all season, and as a result Liriano has looked a lot more like the trainwreck who struggled through the '09 campaign than a front-line ace on the same level as Lee.

Hopefully the additional rest Liriano was provided prior to tonight's start helps him pitch more like the guy who has dominated opposing lineups for much of the season. If so, we could be in for a treat as two of baseball's very best southpaws square off.

If not, the Twins will be in for some trouble tonight, and perhaps for the rest of the season.

Bottom Flores

When Jose Mijares went down a couple weeks ago with a bit of a freak injury -- he tore the meniscus in his knee while stepping on first base to record an out -- the Twins were placed in a bit of a bind. It left them with only one left-handed option in the bullpen, in the person of 39-year-old journeyman Ron Mahay.

When Mahay suffered his own freak injury over the weekend, a season-ending rotator cuff tear sustained while the veteran stumbled off the mound to field a ground ball, the Twins were placed in an even more precarious position. The only remaining lefty in the bullpen was Glen Perkins, who -- as I mentioned a couple weeks ago -- isn't a remotely appealing option against left-handed hitters.

So it figured that Bill Smith would be busy scavenging the waiver wire for a stop gap option to suppress tough lefties as the Twins wait for Mijares' return from the disabled list, which should come in mid-September. Unfortunately, at this stage of the season, the cupboard tends to be a bit bare, so all the Twins could come up with was Randy Flores, a 35-year-old left-hander who had been pitching out of the Rockies bullpen up to this point.

One might take a quick glance at Flores' 2.96 ERA or notice that he's held lefty hitters to a .220 batting average this year and see this as a quality addition to the bullpen. That optimism is likely to fade when one takes a closer look and sees that his average versus lefties is being held down by an unsustainably low .216 BABIP, that lefties are slugging .460 against him despite the low average, that he holds an ugly 18-to-13 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 27 1/3 innings, and that in the past four seasons he has accumulated a 4.96 ERA and a 1.69 WHIP.

Flores isn't very good, and his strong results this year are pretty clearly the result of good fortune. Lately, it seems his luck has been catching up with him, as opponents have run up a 1.068 OPS against him in six August appearances.

With that being said, the Twins weren't going to move forward without a left-handed option in the bullpen and Flores is clearly a better fit than Perkins. While it's hard to envision Flores as a particularly effective top lefty specialist, he'll only be serving as an interim fill-in until Mijares (hopefully) returns for the final stretch run and postseason.

In the meantime, the Twins will make do with Flores in most LOOGY situations, though Ron Gardenhire would be wise to turn to someone like Jesse Crain in extremely high leverage situations, regardless of what side the batter is swinging from.

No Place Like Home

With the Twins nursing a 3.5 game lead in the AL Central and with the White Sox looking ahead at a more imposing final stretch (10 of Chicago's 37 remaining games come against the Yankees and Red Sox), some Twins fans are cautiously beginning to shift their attention toward potential postseason match-ups.

It's a question that has been posed to me often: Who would you rather face in the first round of the playoffs, the Yankees or Rays? Since those two teams have pulled away in the AL East and there's very little chance that the wild card will be coming from any other division, it's almost inevitable that the Twins would face one of those two clubs in the first round should they secure a postseason berth.

Determining which team the Twins would face is simple. If they maintain their slim lead over the Rangers in the win/loss column, the Twins would face whichever team finishes second in the East and enters the postseason as wild card. If the Twins finish with a worse record than the Rangers but still edge the White Sox and win the AL Central, they'd face the AL East champs in the Division Series.

Determining which team the Twins would want to face is a little more complicated.

Most fans would opt for a match-up against the Rays without a second thought. The Twins have played Tampa Bay very competitively this year, both at home and on the road, and let's face it: the Rays just don't have that same intimidating aura surrounding them as the Yankees. Given the Twins' hideous track record against New York over the past decade, it's almost impossible to believe there's not some sort of mental block at work.

But it's no coincidence that the Rays are tied with the Yankees atop baseball's best division; they are a really good team that would pose several match-up problems for the Twins. For one thing, the Rays possess an outstanding rotation led by an ace southpaw who wreaks havoc on left-handed hitters. They also lead the league in stolen bases, which could make them a nightmare for a Twins team whose likely Game One starter is abysmal at controlling the running game.

All things being even, yeah, I'd probably rather see the Twins face the Rays than the Yankees in the first round. New York's powerful lineup and the prospect of trying to win a game in Yankee Stadium are daunting enough. But all things are not even. Because, while both the Yankees and Rays are near-locks to make the playoffs, it's completely unclear at this point which team will do so as division champ and which will do so as the wild card. That's an important distinction, because the latter will have to go on the road for the first two games of the ALDS.

If they finish the year with a better record than the AL West champs, the Twins will hold home field advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Without question, that's more important than which team they match up against. Despite switching ballparks, the Twins have been as reliant as ever on their home field advantage this season, posting a tremendous 40-22 record at Target Field as opposed to a pedestrian 32-32 mark on the road. Throughout the history of the franchise, the Twins have traditionally leaned on winning in their home park to advance through the postseason, and while they no longer play in the quirky Metrodome, they would hold a distinct October advantage over opposing clubs (especially a warm weather/dome team like Texas/Tampa Bay) who aren't accustomed to the chilly outdoor conditions that the Twins will be able to acclimate to in September.

I learned first-hand last year in Game 163 how a team can feed off the emotions of a packed house in a pivotal ballgame. Target Field in September won't be the deafening, raucuous spectacle that the Metrodome was, but opposing teams will be none too comfortable trying to compete in that small space packed to the brim with, for my money, the best fans in baseball.

Of course, gaining that home field edge is completely dependent on the Twins finishing with a better record than the Rangers. So as long as the White Sox don't make a September surge, it could turn out that these last two games in Texas, along with the three-game set between the Twins and Rangers next weekend in Minnesota, may prove to be the most important ones on the remaining schedule.

Whether it's against the Yankees or Rays, the Twins will be in much better position in the playoffs if they force their opponent to beat them in Target Field.