While this may sound like a bitter afterthought from the Twins loss to Chicago tonight, it’s actually been on my mind since I found out the Twins would need to play a tie breaker game due to the White Sox’s win over Detroit yesterday… and apparently I’m not the only one. 

Step back to Sunday afternoon.  The Twins and White Sox both won their respective games, leaving Chicago 0.5 games back due to a missed game.  Step back further to late August when there was a basic three way tie between Minnesota, Chicago and Boston for the two remaining spots in the AL post season.  At that time a coin flip was made to determine where tie breaker games would be played in case two of the three teams tied up one of the two remaining spots for the post-season. 

Before all those continengies and plans were put in place, last Sunday the Twins should have been declared the AL Central Division champions.  At that point, the Twins had bested Chicago in the overall series from the regular season at a tied record (assuming Chicago won their make-up game).  In any other team sport, that would have been enough to declare the Twins division champs and give them a ticket to the post-seaon. 

Instead, we’re going to throw away 162 regular season games and a 18 games series, which the Twins won 10-8, and essentially gamble each team’s chance on a single tie breaker game.  So the Twins essentially played 1 game to make or break their post-season chance and all the other teams got to move on to the next round based on how they played the entire season. 

Thanks Bud, you screwed us again!