Taking it Home

The Mississauga Twins clinched their first ever playoff berth in my first ever non-Christie Pitts road game, doing so with a 5-4 win over Kitchener. It is now mathematically impossible for the Hamilton Thunderbirds to finish the season tied with the Twins for the eighth seed – and final playoff spot – in the IBL.

The win also means that I’ll be skipping tomorrow’s home finale against Guelph in favour of the cottage – is it that tough of a choice, really? – but I’ll be back for the playoffs!

The game tonight was a bit sloppy – a few runners thrown out on awkward plays where they probably shouldn’t have been running (or obviously shouldn’t have been running, in hindsight), but that applied to both teams. Both teams loaded the bases with nobody out and failed to capitalize one time apiece, as well. Kitchener booted the ball around a bit – with crisper defence, Mississauga wouldn’t have built up the 4-0 lead that it did in the top of the first and we would be looking at an entirely different outcome (and playoff picture) right about now.

Shane Cole was as good as I’ve ever seen him, both in terms of stuff (his ball was both quick and lively) and results – he pitched five innings, only allowing three runs and picking up the W. Adam Banski pitched three awesome innings of relief (including the bottom of the ninth) and he again proved himself to be GM Kelcher’s best mid-season pick up. The Twins would literally have 2 or 3 (maybe as many as 4) fewer wins than they now do without him; giving him a chance to play again after Tommy John surgery was literally a season-saving decision on their part.

Darryl Pui hurt himself early in the game (a pulled hamstring, I’m told) and the Twins will need him back for the playoffs. Jeff Macleod, normally strictly a pitcher, filled in in right field and didn’t look a beat off tune the whole time. He was also smooth with the bat, having extra bases taken away from him by the Kitchener centre fielder late in the game.

His real contribution, though, came in the bottom of the ninth, when he hosed an ill-advised Panther who attempted to turn a single into a double at second base. It was actually a close play – I’m thinking it wasn’t altogether an awful decision by Kitchener to force the issue – and Macleod threw both a rocket and a strike to nail him. Without that throw, Kitchener would have had the tying run in scoring position with no one out and we could well still be playing.

The Twins and Panthers are now tied for seventh. I’m told, however, that Kitchener has the edge in a hypothetical tiebreaker, so if both teams lose tomorrow the seventh seed goes to them and the Twins fall to eighth.

That said, if Mississauga beats Guelph and Kitchener loses to Brantford tomorrow, the Twins finish the year with sole possession of seventh.

I’m not really sure anymore that there’s a real advantage to playing Brantford over Barrie in the first round. Mathematically, though, Toronto and Guelph are both still in the running for second place – so we’ll have to see how it all shakes out.

Oh yes – I didn’t update the blog to reflect some scheduling changes made on Sunday: the Twins did wind up getting in their make-up against Brantford, playing in Brantford on Monday night and losing 7-1. They were sloppy in doing so, making four errors over the course of the game.

The playoff schedule is still very much up in the air – the tentative (home) schedule that I saw had the Twins at home on Monday the 3rd, and then the following Wednesday and Saturday. But tonight there were rumours of a Saturday home game (which will be tougher for me to make, but I just might still do it anyways), so at this point I really don’t know.

I’ll try to update the blog to inform ya’ll of the dates and times of the Twins’ home games once they are confirmed, though!

Scheduling the Twins

The most important day of the Mississauga Twins’ season came and went without a single game being played that affected them. There were six games on slate for Sunday in the IBL – an absurd number for a nine team league – and only two were played; that was a doubleheader at Christie Pitts, where the Maple Leafs beat the just-clinched pennant champion Barrie Baycats twice.

All of the rained out games directly impacted the Twins in some way: Brantford-Kitchener was cancelled, and the Twins need Kitchener to continue losing if they are to have a shot at seventh place; both of the Twins’ games, including a pivotal contest against Kitchener that will determine whether or not the Twins even have a chance at the seventh spot and a rained out home game against Guelph that was only being played in Guelph due to diamond availability, were scrapped; and, lastly, the Hamilton/London game, in which a Hamilton loss would assure the Twins of a playoff spot and a Hamilton victory would force them to win at least one of their remaining games to not finish the season in a tie for eighth was also a wash.

The Hamilton-London contest will be played tomorrow, Monday, as the only game on the IBL slate, and its outcome will certainly dramatically alter, one way or another, the tone of the Twins’ final three games: there will be a big difference between playing for a playoff spot and playing with a playoff spot guaranteed and only the luxury of moving up in the standings hanging in the balance.

Mississauga’s schedule the rest of the way out is not entirely clear just yet, in part due to what appears to be an administrative error by the league. What we do know is that the Twins play Kitchener in Kitchener on Tuesday; however, the IBL website lists the Twins playing Guelph twice on Wednesday. The problem with this, of course, is that the Twins only have one game left against Guelph – their other remaining home game is a make-up against Brantford.

I’m not entirely sure what’s going on – maybe there wasn’t an administrative error and the Twins actually are playing Guelph twice on Wednesday, instead of Guelph once and Brantford once. Brantford are in Kitchener Wednesday night, so it would obviously be very hard for them to play in Mississauga earlier in the day and get up there for a 7.30 start. In this case, they would have changed the schedule, obviously, having Guelph take Brantford’s place in a game against Mississauga, and while that seems highly improbable, the IBL are desperate to wrap the regular season up and it’s tough to imagine the season extending beyond Wednesday. Of course, it’s equally tough to imagine that they’d just substitute one team for another in the schedule, so I really have no idea whatsoever.

I’ve sent a couple of emails and I’ll probably follow them up with phone calls tomorrow if necessary to get concrete answers. If I do get a reply tonight that contains important information, I’ll put it up here and fire off a news post for the website.

One more thing before I go – looking at the standings, a very interesting development has cropped up: Toronto is now tied for second place with Brantford, each of them two games back of Barrie. The kicker, though, is that Brantford has played two games less than Toronto has – all the more reason to think, given that they’re now in a tie, that they absolutely must get that rain-out against Mississauga in.

Beyond that, though, the exciting part is the possibility of Mississauga finishing in seventh and Toronto second – that would set up a Battle of the GTA first round, and I’m sure it would be a lot of fun for everyone. It’s certainly an angle I’ll keep an eye on as the next few days play out!

Where We Are

The Twins have dealt with two consecutive rainouts in the past two nights, and there’s a real possibility tomorrow’s game against Brantford could be a wash as well. It’s going to be a problem because there simply aren’t enough days left in the regular season to make them up. The season officially ends Sunday; the Twins, though, play in Kitchener to make up the Wednesday rain-out and then need to play into next week to get in the Guelph game. Word right now is either Monday or Wednesday, and possibly in Guelph (despite it being a home game).

The problem is that they want to wrap things up ASAP so they can have the maximum amount of time possible to rest up for the playoffs – presumably, if they play Monday they could start the playoffs Wednesday or Thursday, and if they play Wednesday they’d have to start Thursday. Maybe they’d start as late as Friday, but I doubt it.

And what happens if the Twins finish the year tied for eighth with Hamilton and require a sudden death, one game playoff after all of the regular season games have been completed? That pushes everything back further, since that game would obviously be absolutely necessary.

Speaking of which, let’s revisit the Twins’ playoff arithmetic:

Hamilton lost tonight in London; it was as close as could possibly be with a 1-0 final. The Thunderbirds now sit two games back of the Twins for the final playoff spot – but the problem is, one of those games is composed of two half games from games which Hamilton has played that Mississauga has not.

Mississauga has three games remaining; Hamilton has one. In order for the two teams to finish in a tie, the Twins need to lose all three of their remaining games and Hamilton needs to win their last game, at home against London on Sunday. The problem is, though, that Hamilton has been playing well as of late. Earlier in the season, they were as far back of the Twins as five and six games; of the past month and a half or so, they’ve narrowed that to one game (in real terms, anyways) and recently have played Brantford to within one run (losing 8-7 earlier in the week) and also lost games by a single run to Mississauga and, tonight, London.

Coupled with all the games they’ve won recently that the Twins haven’t, there’s a very credible chance that they could upset London at home on Sunday, inasfar as the chances of upsets can be credible.

The good news, though, is that the Twins clinch a playoff spot by winning one of their remaining games. At that point, they’d the most ground they could lose to Hamilton is the two games (which are actually worth one in the standings) that are made up of games Mississauga has in hand.

The one that they really want to win is against Kitchener on Sunday. It would pull them even with Kitchener for the seventh spot, and to overtake them they’d need to win one more game than Kitchener loses. Other than the game against each other, both teams have two games remaining: Kitchener plays Toronto tomorrow and Brantford Sunday, before they play Mississauga, and Mississauga, as we know, plays Brantford tonight (Saturday) and Guelph at a yet to be determined date.

There’s a good chance that Kitchener loses to both Toronto and Brantford – both teams are good, and they’ll be playing to kill because they’re very much fighting for leverage in the standings. The problem is that the same thing could be said of Mississauga’s chances against Brantford and Guelph. Twins’ fans can take heart in the fact that the Twins almost beat Guelph on Tuesday, in a game everyone says they should have won, and have already beaten Brantford earlier in the year and played them very close on other occasions. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that they’ll pick off one of those games.

I was at the park tonight and all the players and everyone was there, but even after the game was called I didn’t bother doing any story-chasing. If tomorrow’s game is cancelled, and that would create a huge mess for everyone, I’ll likely be at the park until it’s officially off because they’ll do everything they can to get it in. When I am, I’ll try to tie down some pre-playoff loose ends I’ve been trying to pin down – conversations with newcomers, like Banski and Dickson, as well as getting injuries updates on Asis and Pui. The Twins will need them to be hot to have a fighting chance in any playoff series.

Blog at you after the game tomorrow!

PS -- I almost forgot! Jake Eliopolis, who was drafted by the Blue Jays this past June (and who is younger than me -- my God) is supposedly still with the Red Sox right now, and I've been planning on trying to chat with him for a long time but I haven't seen the Red Sox play since May 23rd, prior to his being drafted. I'm not sure if I'll do a feature on him if I get the chance to talk, due to the lack of a place to publish it (although I may well shop it around -- who knows?) but if I do talk to him, I'll definitely either paraphrase or quote what he had to say on the blog.

I've also wanted to talk to Rick Johnston, a Red Sox coach/executive who has been around Baseball Canada, the Blue Jays & really everything else baseball in Canada for quite some time. The big thing I wanted to chat about was the future of the national team -- and Ernie Whitt's future as manager -- after that debacle in March, but I was also curios to get his thoughts on what's going on with the Blue Jays right now, since I'm pretty sure he guest-coached at spring training during the Gaston Era I. Anyways, nothing against Rick, but I kind of doubt that there's a market for an article about that conversation, but it'll definitely go up here because I'm sure it'll be very interesting stuff!

Cooking the Birds

(pre-post aside: sorry about the lack of coverage of the London doubleheader; it was one of those things where they lost both and there wasn’t a ton to say, other than that the real focus shifts to tonight’s game against Hamilton – which everyone already knew, anyways. There will be a game story on the Twins’ site for the doubleheader, though!)

Tonight was one of those rare nights where things played out about as well as they could have for the Twins – it’s true, a couple different bounces this way or that way, and the outcome could have been disastrous, and perhaps ‘as well as they could’ means pounding your opponent 25-0 and never having any real competition, but it’s really tough to complain at all about a walk-off win in a game that amounted to single elimination in front of the home fans.

The Twins came into tonight tied with Hamilton for the final playoff spot, and this was the final meeting between the two teams. A win and they move a comfortable game ahead; a loss and they’re behind the eight ball in a very big way. They nailed the win, and now the bigger question becomes whether or not they can leap-frog Kitchener for the seventh spot.

The game tonight was the sort of Jekyll and Hyde bipolar baseball that has characterized the Twins’ season so far – they jumped all over Hamilton to stroll to an 8-3 lead early on, and it looked like the coaching staff’s biggest decision of the evening would be the ethics of running up the score against a helpless opponent (the answer, of course, is to keep the foot on the pedal – as shown by Toronto hammering out 22 runs once upon a time against Mississauga). But starter Mike McGilvray faltered – or maybe Hamilton just started hitting better, it’s tough to say – and after an ugly six run fourth the visitors had a one run lead and seemingly all the momentum.
Mississauga, to their credit, tied it up in the bottom of the fourth, and it remained knotted at nines until the Good Guys took the lead back in the bottom of the seventh. That lead, of course, was promptly squandered in the tenth thanks to an Adam Banski throwing error, but that just set the stage for Zach Dickson’s bottom of the ninth heroics.

Anyways, the minute details of who walked who and who advanced to which base on what pitch in the dirt will all be featured in the game story, which will be up on MississaugaTwins.com soon, but there’s a few bigger stories that are worth looking at right about now:

The biggest, I think, is the performance of Adam Banksi. Don’t let the above tidbit about his throwing error fool you – he’s been an absolute godsend for the Twins since they gave him a chance to re-start his career after Tommy John surgery. He’s been about as clutch as possible, working in relief in a handful of games since debuting. He picked up the win in his first ever appearance as a Twin against Oshawa several weeks ago; he also got the win tonight, working more than three innings in outstanding relief.

I said as soon as he signed that anyone who was good enough to have been expected to contribute to Barrie’s pitching staff last year – that’s where he played before needing the surgery – would help the Twins immeasurably, and he has. He has tremendous stuff – a ‘plus’ fastball and downright nasty breaking pitches, and the Twins would be extremely lucky to have him as an anchor of their pitching staff heading into next year and beyond. With the way he has pitched so far, he is certain to command interest from other teams, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens.

I tried to talk to him tonight, but he left by the time I was done with coach Held’s media scrum – I might be at the game in Kitchener on Thursday, and I hope to catch up with him then.

Another pitcher who has shown great stuff is Jeff Macleod – he was cut by Barrie earlier in the year, and he’s been a reliable, veteran (although I’m not sure of his age)-type player for Mississauga thus far. He got himself into huge trouble in the top of the ninth, putting two on with no one out (including a dicey runners-on-second-and-third-with-one-out situation), but he was unfazed and worked out of with near-superhuman poise. He’s certainly commanded the coaching staff’s confidence as much as any other pitcher, and he should be a go-to guy in tough situations in the homestretch and the playoffs.

Zach Dickson has been a bonafide superstar since arriving from the States several weeks ago. He has consistently been an impact player, hitting near the top of the line up and turning in exemplary at-bats. He can work a pitcher and foul off multiple pitches with unfathomable ease, and he has the kind of inside-out swing that batting coaches dream about. He has been a lead-off hitter under both Calcagni and Held, but Held seems to have moved him into the number two slot – I think that’s a great position for him to hit out of, provided an adequate lead-off hitter can be found. Dickson can handle the bat really well, so you could use him to hit and run, play for contact, or bunt, as the situation calls for. Emmett was just fine in the lead-off slot tonight, so I think that Zach will be a big part of the offense hitting second.

So, this is getting long and I would like to knock off a few game stories before I turn in for the night. Let’s just take a brief look at the Twins’ prospects for the rest of the season first, though:
They sit a game and a half ahead of Hamilton for the final playoff spot right now. If they can win the game that they have in hand over Hamilton, that’ll jump to a two game lead; if they lose it, it’ll fall to a single game lead. Mississauga has four games remaining: tonight (Tuesday) in Guelph; Thursday in Kitchener; Friday at home against Guelph, and Saturday at home against Brantford. Hamilton has three games to go – once in Brantford and twice against London.
To overtake the Twins, Hamilton needs to win at least one of their remaining games, which seems unlikely given the way that their season has gone. Even if they can manage a single win, the best it would do is pull them into a tie with the Twins and force a sudden-death playoff game.

Mississauga, on the other hand, stands a fair chance of beating Kitchener – doing so would effectively eliminate Hamilton, since there’s just about no way that they’ll win two of their final three, which is what would need to happen if the Twins beat the Panthers. Even in the Twins lose all of their remaining games, though, it’s still very tough for the Thunderbirds to catch them in the standings, all things considered. In short, it would take the baseball equivalent of an ice fishing trip in Hell – and I’m told that those things do happen on occasion, as they have the last two years when the Mets collapsed in September – for the Twins to altogether miss the playoffs.
More exciting, though, is the arithmetic surrounding the possibility of the Twins jumping into the seventh spot. The Panthers have three games left – one each against Mississauga, Toronto, and Brantford. Unless they beat Mississauga, they’re very likely to go 0-3.

Right now, Kitchener is a half-game ahead of the Twins, and that half-game is because of the fact that they’ve played one more game than the Twins, which they happened to win.

If they beat the Twins Thursday, they’ll jump to a game and a half ahead of the Twins, and it’ll then become very difficult for the Twins to overtake them.

But, if the Twins win, they’ll slip a half-game ahead of Kitchener, and a full game ahead if they can win one of their remaining games (to make up for the game in hand). If Mississauga beats Kitchener and loses the rest of their remaining games, they’ll finish tied with Kitchener for the final spot – provided that Kitchener doesn’t upset Brantford or Toronto. I’ll have to do some research on seventh-place tie breakers and get back to you guys about how that’ll work.
So, this is how it sits for the Twins right now:

Sole possession of seventh: beat Kitchener Thursday and win one other game

Tie for seventh: beat Kitchener Thursday and lose all the other games

Sole possession of eighth: lose all remaining games, Kitchener included.

Wow, that’s a lot to process for one night! I’m off to try to tackle some game stories – I’m likely to attend the game in Kitchener, so I’ll blog on it after. Comments are always welcome and will be responded to!

A Changing of the Guard

Well, well, well… first of all, my apologies for the lack of blogging over the past week – I was out west and I did not have as reliable of Internet access as I had expected to. And, while I was gone, the Twins’ season took a dizzying mixture of ups, downs, turns and bends. I’m not quite sure how turns are different from bends, but you probably get the idea.

The big news is that manager Adeo Calcagni was fired – turns out his position was paid, according to sources, so he wasn’t simply ‘released’ or ‘let go’ – after Wednesday’s loss in Brantford. He was replaced by erstwhile bench coach and now interim manager Ian Held, and General Manager Doug Kelcher becomes the second assistant coach for the remainder of the year.

I – and a lot of other people – expected the axe to fall on Calcagni a lot sooner than it did. In my mind, he became a lame duck-type after the two consecutive home drubbings to Barrie, and it was in those games that he first started to admit that he really had no answers. I pinpoint those games in particular because the Sunday before, after the Twins lost 9-0 at Christie Pitts, he told the media he still had a very positive outlook on the season (and I more or less agreed, too). After the Barrie beatings, they lost 22-2 to Toronto and then I really thought he was done.

But nothing happened for a long time – a long time in baseball terms, anyways – and I figured the Twins’ brass had settled on stringing out the season and going back to the drawing board in the off season. A week ago tonight, I asked Kelcher if the current coaching staff would finish the year, and even though his answer was far from an unequivocal vote of confidence, he did seem to take any changes off the table.

I suppose the reason I thought that they would just string it out is because I didn’t expect the new manager to come from within the organization – as Held obviously is – so I thought any change that might have been made would have been wholesale and a whole new staff would have been brought in to learn the team before the playoffs.

And when I first learned that Held was going to be the new guy, I had my doubts – based on my limited exposure to him, which consisted of two media scrums Calcagni hadn’t been available for , I thought it would have been better to go outside the organization – but tonight’s game against Oshawa put those mostly to rest. It’s true, the Twins lost by one, but they played head over heels better than they have at any point recently; they were as into the game as I’ve ever seen them; and Held clearly has a great relationship with his player – which Calcagni certainly did not.

Indeed, the Twins were vocal, enthusiastic, persistent, and – most importantly – played error-free baseball in their post game under Held, and had Shane Cole turned in a slightly better start, or had Jon Amendola been slightly better in relief, they would have won.

Held also impressed me in his post-game media meeting – I suppose that the two previous times I had spoken to him, he was talking as Calcagni’s assistant coach, but tonight, speaking as his own boss, his was fluent in discussing the team, his plans for individual players, and his vision of how he sees things potentially coming together for the Twins over the home stretch.

And really, it was time for Calcagni to go – I was muted in my criticism of him, as was the other beat writer, Gary McCarthy, until he wrote what I thought was a fairly scathing article (relative to anything else he’s written previously, anyways) right after Calcagni was fired, but really, it was all there:

-- Debatable personnel use
-- By all accounts, zero respect and often overt dislike from his players (this being gleaned from my conversations with players, their family/friends and, well, nearly everybody else)
-- The Gordon Scandal: pitching non-pitcher Derek Gordon for a hundred and forty-friggin-four pitches against Barrie, and then never pitching him again after he held them to three runs!
n And the results – a 7-20 record, which is where they were at at the time of his firing, has to weigh in in some way

Anyways, that page is turned, but the Twins aren’t out of the woods yet. The logjam that once existed at the top of the IBL standings now exists at the bottom: Hamilton is a game behind Mississauga, who is a game behind Kitchener. Those teams, of course, are seeded 7-8-9.

So, it’s conceivable that the Twins could miss the playoffs – and equally conceivable that they could leap frog into that seventh spot, and a potentially winnable first round series against Brantford. They have a pivotal make-up game against Hamilton on Monday, and then end the season against Kitchener on the road on the following weekend.

Their chances of missing the playoffs have decreased significantly since the coaching change. I think it hugely increases their chances of winning that pivotal Hamilton game; I also think they’ll be able to pick up another win or two along the way – they have seven games left, according to Held – with the improved play and attitude that they showed tonight.

It starts with a doubleheader against London tomorrow – first game’s first pitch at 5.30 at home – and then primetime will come on Monday when Hamilton arrives in town.

I’m behind on my articles – what else is new! – and the Twins’ website guy is apparently away for a little bit, so look for some new material on the website for Monday or Tuesday, including my long-anticipated feature on the new players. In the mean time, to see the quick piece I hammered out at the Calgary airport this morning, check out ‘Mississauga Twins’ on Facebook; the article is posted as a note there.

I just realized I totally skimmed over the details of tonight’s game – but obviously, there was a far bigger story, and you’ll all get to read about the game in my story later this week anyways!

Changing the Twins

(pre-post aside: check out some recent game stories at http://www.mississaugatwins.ca/gamenotes.htm)

I’ve tried about four different times to write an intro paragraph to this post, and it just isn’t working. I was going for something that would encapsulate the recent direction of the team – sort of like how my posts after the Barrie/Toronto blow outs were hugely negative, and my post after the Oshawa W was more positive.

Truth is, it’s tough to know what to say anymore – they were beaten handily, although nowhere near as bad as last time, by the Leafs again right after the Oshawa win offered a flicker of hope. But then, somehow, they played Barrie really tight, losing 3-2 on the road. The most remarkable part? Derek Gordon pitched a complete game for the Twins – which was only his second appearance of the year as a pitcher, and his first as a starter.

The biggest news out of the past week, though? A slew of roster moves. To boot:

Joining the Twins: Adam Banski; Jeff Skelhorne-Gross; Zach Dickson; Jeff MacLeod; Tyler Moe

Leaving the Twins: Matt Calcagni; Luis Castillo; Sean Pisraki; Scott Wells.

Banski had Tommy John surgery almost exactly a year ago after making seven starts for the Baycats. He worked in relief in the Oshawa win, and I certainly think it’s encouraging that he had been expected to contribute to a team as good as Barrie pre-injury. Skelhorne-Gross was released by Barrie; time will tell what his contribution will be. Dickson, as I understand, was in the States until recently – although I need to look into the details, and I think he could be an impact player. MacLeod was released by Brantford on the same day he was signed by the Twins; Lord knows a Brantford cast-off will be able to help the at least the back end of the Twins’ staff. I can’t account for Moe, although I will get on it.

Calcagni – the coach’s son – simply didn’t work out after the Twins picked him up following his release for an independent league out west. He struggled to hit .150 and he hasn’t been around recently, so I think in reality he had left the team a while ago.

Castillo goes to the Northwoods League – they play in parts of the northern States (Wisconsin and Minnesota, primarily) and have a team in Thunder Bay. While I’m sure no one on the Twins was happy to see him leave, it is certainly a step up the baseball ladder for him and that’s what happens to the better talents in the IBL, sometimes. I’m not entirely sure why Pisarski was let go – it could just be performance, since he didn’t get a ton of playing time and didn’t tear it up when he did see action. Wells hasn’t been around much, and I’m thinking his release was a formality after being a de facto reality for a while.

I’m planning on doing a feature about these changes shortly – I need to contact GM Kelcher and go over a few of these guys in a bit more detail. I’ll let you all know when it’s up, though!

Anyways, I’ll skim over the long-term prognosis stuff for now, I think. The basic narrative is the same as it has been for the past month or so: the Twins are a lot better than they’ve been playing; they can be a lot more competitive than they have been lately; there would be no better time for that to happen than the playoffs; they might well be sacrificial lambs offered up on the altar of the Baycats in the first round, unless they can find a way to slip out of that eighth place spot (but not into ninth, obviously); the close 3-2 loss could offer reason to doubt the previous statement.

The Twins, at present, find themselves both three games ahead of Hamilton for the final playoff spot and three games behind Kitchener for that seventh spot. The risk of them finding a way to miss the playoffs seems to have mostly passed – they play Hamilton on Saturday (I’ll be in Alberta, though) at home, and if they can beat them and push that gap to four games, I think we can call it with certainty. If Hamilton beats them, well, it’ll be a tight finish with only a two game sized breathing space, but I still think it will be hugely difficult for Hamilton to pick up even two games.

They host Oshawa at home on Friday, and I’ll be there – as always, check back for my post-game blogging!

Hangin' Around

Ah, the fluidity of baseball. I’m away for a couple of days and the Twins’ entire situation does about three 360’s, and they now find themselves landed somewhere roughly resembling on their feet.

After the 22-1 Toronto loss, I think a lot of people were ready to write the epitaph on this season. The only real question remaining in a lot of minds was whether or not they could cling on to that final playoff spot before being sacrificed to the Baycats in the first round. I was even ready to write a post about how the chances of them hanging onto that playoff spot had gone, in my mind, from about to certain to still highly probable to possibly questionable after they dropped 4-3 game in Hamilton on Sunday.

I would have written that in order for them to miss the playoffs, they would need to lose again to Hamilton and Hamilton would need to steal a couple of games here and there.

And then, lo and behold, paranormal events of paranormal events, the lowly Thunderbirds stun the second place Brantford Red Sox on Tuesday, and I was starting to think that the Twins’ ship had sailed.

And then, and then, and then... the Twins rolled into Oshawa tonight and, looking dead in the water, posted a four-run top of the ninth to go up by 2, and then held on to a one run lead after giving up a run in the bottom of the ninth, to pick up a HUGE come-from-behind win against a key rival in the standings and turn all of this speculation right on its head.

I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the importance of this win. I haven’t had a chance to look at the boxscore yet, which is often just as important as the result itself, but that does little to change what this game means for the Twins.

It gives them a three and a half game buffer over the T-Birds for that last spot, and, perhaps more importantly, pulls them within a game and a half of Kitchener for the seventh spot. London and Oshawa, in the fifth and sixth spots, are a ways up – the Twins trail both by 4 games, and it would take a torrent final month to make up those games. Not impossible – but it will be very, very tough to do.

Aside from the strict math of the standings, the win demonstrates a couple of things: i) the Twins aren’t as bad as they’ve demonstrated over the past little while – which makes sense, since no one could be, and ii) they can still beat the teams ahead of them that they need to beat to make up ground in the playoff race. This, too, was seriously challenged during the losing streak.

The seventh spot is interesting – if Mississauga were to get there, it would set up a likely first round matchup with Brantford. This, by far, represents the Twins’ best shot at an upset. They’ve already beaten the Red Sox once – on the road, to boot. They also came very, very close to beating them at home on opening day. Perhaps most interestingly, the Red Sox have shown that they can be vulnerable at times, dropping that shocker to Hamilton.

Anyways, tomorrow’s (tonight’s, actually) home game against the Maple Leafs represents a chance to take a big step forward. Unfortunately, I won’t be there, but I should be blogging on the outcome and doing a game story based on long-distance interviewing.

Speaking of which, part of the reason I felt so down on the Twins before seeing the outcome of the Oshawa game might have something to do with the fact that I spent about two hours tonight writing the past three games’ worth of articles – man, those were bad. The games, not the articles – obviously. They should be up soon on MississaugaTwins.ca, and whenever they are I’ll include a link here.

The IBL has posted updated statistics, and I would encourage everyone to take a look at them – they really strengthen your understanding of who is doing what and help you think critically about what is going on in the games. They are right here:

http://www.theibl.ca/documents/RELEASE7_000.pdf

I’m going to check into whether or not some of the new guys listed with the Twins are permanent team members now, or if that page is just including call-ups. As always, if I find out anything of substance, it will go here – and possibly into a piece for the website!