No more of those 163rd games for the Minnesota Twins. This year, they can be first to the playoffs rather than last. But that's hardly the end of the regular season for a team that could use the remaining week and a half to deal with injuries and set up a pitching rotation.Plus, the best record in the AL is in sight, which means home advantage in the playoffs. That's the dilemma for the Twins as well as the Yankees and Rays in the AL East, who began a four-game series Monday with a Yankees victory and whose race could go down to some complicated tiebreakers. And even the NL playoff pairings could be settled by tiebreakers.
A 9-3 home victory Monday against Cleveland -- plus Oakland's later 3-0 win against the second place White Sox -- leaves Minnesota with a chance to wrap up the AL Central tonight. But it's the same matchups so, truth be told, maybe the Twins would just as soon take care of their own business. At least for the celebration's sake.
After all, the only way to clinch tonight is win again and wait for a game that starts two hours later to end. Plus, the Twins have a quick turnaround for a 12:10 p.m. local-time start Wednesday.
"It's a weird situation," said first baseman Michael Cuddyer. Especially because the Twins would love to reward their fans with a little party -- and Wednesday's game is the last at home for a week.
The Twins got center fielder Denard Span back from a shoulder injury Monday and he had an RBI triple and RBI single. Right fielder Jason Kubel is close to returning from his wrist injury but catcher Joe Mauer probably will have an MRI today on his sore knee.
Manager Ron Gardenhire told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune the test is more of a precaution because Mauer's knee, though sore, hasn't swollen since he jammed it Sunday.
Whenever they clinch, the Twins are just one game behind the Yankees -- and a half-game ahead of the Rays -- for best record. But they want to get everyone healthy and set up a playoff pitching rotation which currently looks like Francisco Liriano, Carl Pavano and Brian Duensing, with Nick Blackburn leading Kevin Slowey and Scott Baker for the fourth spot.
The Star-Tribune's bloggers have a complete breakdown of the team's roster possibilities.
Minnesota has a magic number of nine over Texas to wrap up home advantage in the Division Series against the East runnerup. As for home edge in the AL Championship Series, the Twins have the two remaining games in the Cleveland series, three at Detroit, three at Kansas City and four at home against Toronto to pad their record.
Minnesota lost their season series to the Yankees and Rays and that's the tiebreaker for playoff seedings. A Yankees-Rays tie in the AL East would be broken the same way -- no one-game tiebreaker like the Twins needed the past two seasons to decide the AL Central -- since both teams are headed to the postseason anyway.
The Yankees' 8-6 home victory Monday, thanks to two homers and five RBI from Curtis Granderson, gave them a 1 1/2-game division lead over the Rays. It also cut Tampa Bay's season-series lead to 8-7.
The only way for the Yankees to win the season series is to sweep the three remaining games, beginning with tonight's game that matches the Rays' James Shields and New York's Phil Hughes. Tampa Bay will start Wade Davis and David Price the next two nights and the Yankees will use A.J. Burnett and CC Sabathia.
Should the Yankees win two of the three, the season series ends 9-9. Then, the tie would be broken by the teams' records within the AL East. Tampa Bay has the current edge -- 39-27 to the Yankees' 34-26. If the Yankees won the two of three to knot the season series, the Rays would still be 40-29 to the Yankees' 36-27.
The Yankees finish their season within the division -- six against Boston, three against Toronto -- while the Rays have only three with Baltimore. But those results wouldn't matter because if the Yankees made up the intradivision difference, they'd finish first by a comfortable margin anyway.
Tiebreakers in the NL are most likely to focus on the Division Series pairings, especially now the the Phillies have six more wins than anyone else after their 3-1 showdown victory Monday against Atlanta. Cole Hamels dominated the Braves for eight innings (one run, six hits) to give Philadelphia a four-game lead in the NL East. And the Phillies have Roy Halladay and Roy Oswalt starting the next two games -- against Atlanta's Mike Minor and Tommy Hanson.
Atlanta's wild-card lead is down to two games over San Diego, which trails San Francisco by a half-game for the NL West lead. Colorado is another game behind San Diego.
Cincinnati's NL Central lead is up to seven games over St. Louis after a 5-2 victory at Milwaukee and the Cardinals' 4-0 loss at Florida but the Reds are only a half-game better than San Francisco to determine the second team after presumably the Phillies with home advantage in the Division Series.
The Reds already lost the season series with San Francisco and Colorado and trail the Padres 2-1 with three games this weekend in San Diego.
The head-to-head within the NL West, which would determine the site of a tiebreaker game if the division ends in a tie, or settle the division should two teams pass the Braves in the wild-card race and tie for the division:
The Rockies won the season series with the Padres;
The Padres have clinched the edge over the Giants though they finish the season with three games in San Francisco;
The Giants lead the Rockies 8-7 with three games this weekend in Colorado. And the Rockies' division record is 36-27, the Giants' 32-31.
And should the Braves and a West team tie for the wild card, Atlanta would visit Colorado but host the Giants or Padres in a tiebreaker game.
Oh, and ever wonder about the tiebreaker after division record?
It's the best record in the second half of the reason. If that's tied, they count backward into the first half one game at a time until the tie is broken but skip interleague games.