(Plotting to Slip) The Noose

I sort of fell behind the blogging curve because of being up north, but I’m back now and the Twins are in the heat of their first ever playoff series – not incidentally, they’re also teetering on the brink of disaster.

They wound up coming in seventh, passing Kitchener in the tiebreaker, which turned out to be run differential in head-to-head games. As a result, they drew second place Brantford in the first round. I heard several different descriptions of how the tiebreaker was settled throughout the season; I’m pretty sure that head-to-head run differential was not one of them.

Anyways, even before game 1 was played I saw a bit of a problem with this. I have always argued that a first round match-up with Brantford was the Twins’ best shot because they’ve beaten them and played them tight in the regular season, but my thinking shifted over the last week of the season: Barrie spent the better part of a week on cruise control after clinching; Brantford, on the other hand, have been playing hard to fight for second.

Trying to jump the complacent, cruise-control team and take them by surprise seemed to me, by far, to be a better bet than taking on the Red Sox. Reality, I think, bears me out: Barrie find themselves in a shockingly tight series with Kitchener, up 2-1 but with both of their wins being by a single run. Mississauga, on the other hand, trail Brantford 2-0. I think the Twins are a better team than Kitchener, so had they drawn Barrie it’s not unthinkable that they could have the 2-1 advantage.

But the punchline is that they didn’t – they’re in a hole against Brantford and have their heads in a noose heading into tomorrow (today’s) 8.00 tilt in Brantford. If they lose, the noose is substantially tightened as they’ll trail 3-0 in the series; if they win, they’ll come home with a chance to even the series up before heading back on the road later in the week, where they normally play far better than at home.

There’s some upside for the Twins. The two games that they dropped to open the series have been very tight – the real heartbreaker was a 2-1 loss in extra innings to open the series up on Saturday night (they took a 1-0 lead in the top of the ninth and coughed it up), and today they lost 7-4, and, from what I’ve seen and read, they were right there: it was a 1-run game until Brantford put up 2 in the ninth, and given the Twins’ season it’s very likely that a couple of the Brantford runs shouldn’t have scored and/or that they missed a few chances to punch in extra runs.

Branson Joseph, I’m pretty sure it was, told the Mississauga news today that he felt the first two games of the set were the best the Twins have played all year.

So, the following factors all go in the Twins favour right now, despite how ominous a 2-0 deficit strikes most people as: they have beaten Brantford in Brantford; they’ve come close to beating Brantford at home; they’ve played very well lately; they’ll have an acute sense of urgency that Brantford will not have, being down 2-0; and, most importantly, they play a hell of a lot better on the road than at home.

Like I said, all it takes is a W tomorrow on the road, and they get to come home looking to tie the series. They’ve been very close; tomorrow could well be their day.

I’ll be at the game tomorrow – to make up for missing the 2 o’clock long-weekend Sunday home game – and on Wednesday, and likely the rest of the games from here on out (for the first round, at least).

Take a look at my game story from the Kitchener playoff-clinching win at http://www.mississaugatwins.ca/gamenotes.htm and check back tomorrow night for post-game blogging!