Tomorrow night in Minnesota, the Tigers will play the Twins in a game to determine the AL Central champion. Rookie Rick Porcello will square off against Twins' ace Scott Baker. Both righties have pitched well lately, especially Porcello. The Twins will play a 163rd game for the second straight year, having lost to the White Sox last fall. As we know, Tuesday's winner will travel to the Bronx for a Wednesday night date with the New York Yankees.
Both teams are depleted offensively. The Tigers' lineup has been impotent all season and the Twins are without slugger Justin Morneau. Still, Minnesota has been scoring runs over their last 20 games en route to winning 16 of those contests.
The starters are evenly matched. Baker throws strikes and invites contact. He's efficient and adept at keeping the ball down. Porcello, just 20 years old, has showed tremendous poise down the stretch and has arguably been even better than Justin Verlander.
Both bullpens are average units and the Twins' pen has been terrible of late. It's imperative that the Twins push runs across in the first five innings as their pen is liable to surrender a few runs back to the Tigers.
Another note of interest concerns Detroit firstbaseman Miguel Cabrera who was involved in a domestic dispute Saturday morning. It's any one's guess how this will affect him, just something to bear in mind.
All signs point to a Minnesota win. They have the momentum and the home field advantage.
To me, this comes down to the starting pitchers. Porcello just doesn't miss enough bats. In his last 31 innings, he's punched out just 9 batters. By contrast, Baker has whiffed 29 men in his last 34 innings. Baker is clearly the better pitcher and he'll put the Twins into the postseason.
Twins 7 Tigers 3
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