As Derek Shelton did his pregame media availability on Saturday, the television in his office was set to the Chicago White Sox-Detroit Tigers game.
The White Sox are the current division leaders, while the Tigers are close to the Twins in the wild card standings, and Shelton was asked if he cared which team won the game.
“I mean, no. One of the two’s gotta lose,” he said. “The worst-case scenario is when teams in our division play each other. If both could lose … that would be awesome.”
The regular season wraps up six weeks from Sunday and the Twins are squarely in the postseason mix. So is about half of the American League.
The White Sox have recently started to put a bit of distance between themselves and the rest of the Central Division. They entered Sunday with a 4 1/2 game lead over the Tigers and a five-game lead over both the Twins and Cleveland Guardians.
Entering Sunday, FanGraphs gave the White Sox a 53.2% chance to win the division, followed by the Guardians (17.9), Twins (14.5) and Tigers (14.4).
Though the Twins are much closer to being in position to win a wild card, FanGraphs gives them a higher chance of making the playoffs through winning the division than securing a wild card berth (8.8%).
In total, they had a 23.4% chance to make the playoffs, per FanGraphs, entering Sunday’s finale against the Philadelphia Phillies.
That’s likely because so many other teams are right there in the wild card mix. While the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox were both far ahead of the rest of the pack (7 1/2 and 5 1/2 games ahead of the third spot, entering Sunday), six teams entered the day within a game.
They include the Texas Rangers, who entered Saturday in playoff position, the Toronto Blue Jays, Baltimore Orioles and Tigers, who all sat a half game back of Texas, and the Twins and Guardians, who are a game back.
It’s a tangled mess, put simply. None of those six teams are above .500. And so for the Twins, all that really matters is winning the game in front of them.
“It’s just been tough these last few games and it’s just baseball,” starting pitcher Connor Prielipp said after Saturday’s loss. “There’s going to be ups and downs and we’re just in a down right now.”
BrieflyThe schedule doesn’t get any easier for the Twins with the division-leading Atlanta Braves coming to town for a three-game series beginning on Sunday. Bailey Ober (7-4, 4.64 ERA) will start the first game of the series against Atlanta against left-hander Martín Pérez (8-6, 2.96 ERA), a former Twin. … Former Twins closer Jhoan Duran returned to Target Field this weekend for the first time since the trade that sent him to Philadelphia and said it was “really good,” to be back. “I remember when the schedule was out, I turned to my wife and said to her, ‘I want to go to Minnesota. I can’t wait for that.’”
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