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!