[Syd Thrift]

Team Overviews
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I think I'm going to publish these on a daily basis for the LCSes and the World Series.

ALCS
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Minnesota Twins: The Twins are the only champs the AL West has known, having won twice in the first 2 years of divisional play. It was a somewhat rocky road to get here. They've got the 3rd best offense in the AL, although it's pretty top-heavy. The pitching is also 3rd in the league although their #1 and #2 starters are both arguably in contention for the Cy Young this year.

New York Yankees: We just saw the Yanks in the previous report. Nothing new about them!

Major Transactions
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News
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October 3: The NOAA is formed.

October 4: Twins LF Alejandro Cortes suffered a bruised elbow in today's game. He left the game today but will likely play through it.

Game Infos
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October 4: Twins @ Yankees

The scheduling gods were not kind to New York, as they made the Yanks travel back from Cleveland to host the Twins. Minnesota has gotten a much-needed 2 days off. We're playing in Yankee Stadium, which as everyone already knows is a pitcher's park where it is damn near impossible for right-handed hitters to hit homeruns. That may not affect Minnesota as much as some teams, as their top HR guys are 2 lefties and a switch hitter.

The Twins send Angelo Ramos (20-2, 2.41) to the mound. The 35 year old is a 9 time All-Star and 205 game winner who might just have won his first ever Cy Young Award. He led the league in ERA and the only reason it's a "might" is that injuries kept him out of the rotation for about a month and limited him to 29 starts this season. He is opposed by the Flying Dutchman, Obe Olthof (21-11, 3.27), a 25 year old who faded pretty badly down the stretch, finishing with a 3-5 record and 4.47 ERA in the month of September. It's probably just tiredness - his 36 starts and 261.1 innings were career highs - but I mean, it's not like he's gotten any more time to rest...

Top 1st: Twins RF Lou Morgenstern (.239, 19, 72) coaxes a walk out of Olthof to lead off the game and then steals second. SS Danny Pellot (.257, 3, 25) flies out to short left field. 1B Angelo Martinez (.276, 35, 96) slaps a hard groundball down the first base line for a double, scoring Morgenstern. 3B Mike Brookes (.267, 39, 112) makes it back to back doubles as he scorches one into the right-center gap, bringing Martinez home. The Twins go back to back to back on doubles; this time it's LF Alejandro Cortez (.259, 24, 70) who knocks in Brookes. CF Jose Villasenor (.274, 12, 36) strikes out for the second out of the inning. C Brad Reed (.238, 18. 66) hits a BLOOPER to center that drops right in front of Micah MacMillan. Cortez scores all the way from 2nd. 2B Marty Mendel (.255, 0, 38) singles. Angelo Martinez strikes out but the ball gets away from C Khalil Tabb and he can't make the throw to first in time (isn't that supposed to be blocked when there's a runner already at first?). With the bases loaded and a chance to knock Obe Olthof out of this game, Lou Morgenstern flies to left field.

Twins 4, Yankees 0

Bottom 1st: CF Micah MacMillan (I just posted these stats in the previous report; look at those, suckaaaa!) strikes out. 3B Tommy Weiss, who hit .341 against Minnesota this year in the regular season, flies out to left. 1B Antonio Cardenas strikes out swinging.

Twins 4, Yankees 0

Top 2nd: Pellot strikes out. Martinez walks on 4 pitches. Brookes also walks. No question, Olthof is laboring early. Cortes flies to left. Villasenor pops out to shortstop.

Twins 4, Yankees 0

Bottom 2nd: RF Franklin Meneses flies to left. LF Dan Field gets the Yankees' first hit of the game, a single to right. C Khalil Tabb hits the ball towards the hole at second, which Marty Mendel catches up to with easily enough time to turn the 4-6-3 double play.

Twins 4, Yankees 0

Top 3rd: Brad Reed gets his 2nd hit in as many at-bats, a single up the middle. Marty Mendel grounds out to Wing-Fung Yi and the Yankees' 2B returns the favor Mendel delivered at the top of the inning by kickstarting a 4-6-3 DP of his own. Ramos strikes out.

Twins 4, Yankees 0

Bottom 3rd: Jones Ks. Yi fouls out to first base. Olthof grounds to first.

Twins 4, Yankees 0

Top 4th: Morgenstern hits a slow roller towards Pat Jones that he beats out for a base hit. Danny Pellot hits a much more decisive single to right that moves Morgenstern to third. Martinez hits a grounder back to the pitcher that he converts into a fielder's choice at second, Morgenstern remaining at third. Brookes lifts a 3-2 pitch into right, where it twists foul and is caught by Meneses for the out; however, Morgenstern tags up and scores on the play. Cortes strikes out looking.

Twins 5, Yankees 0

Bottom 4th: MacMillan grounds out 3-1. Weiss hits a hard grounder to Pellot, who throws it to first but the ball ricochets off Martinez's glove for an error. Cardenas strikes out. Meneses singles to right, Weiss getting into 3rd on the play. Field flies out to right.

Twins 5, Yankees 0

Top 5th: Villasenor strikes out swinging, the 6th K by Olthof. Reed flies to center. Mendel also flies to center.

Twins 5, Yankees 0

Bottom 5th: Tabb Ks. Jones grounds to 3rd. Yi walks. Olthof is now at 100 pitches even and had a very rocky start but he seems to have settled down and it's only the 5th so I'll leave him in. He ekes out an infield hit. MacMillan flies to left.

Twins 5, Yankees 0

Top 6th: Ramos - no question about leaving him in - singles to right to lead things off. Morgenstern hits a grounder to short but Ramos breaks up the double play opportunity (um, come on man... you're coming off of an injury). Danny Pellot grounds to the pitcher, who gets the force at second but the ball is hit way too slowly for a double play. Pellot takes second, putting a runner in scoring position with 2 outs. Tabb commits a passed ball. Martinez grounds out harmlessly to first base.

Twins 5, Yankees 0

Bottom 6th: Weiss flies to center. Cardenas singles just past Martinez at first and into right field. Meneses belts it to deep right-center... but not quite deep enough, as Morgenstern catches it on the warning track. Field singles into right, Cardenas moving up 90 feet. Tabb singles into left, scoring Cardenas from 2nd. Back-to-back-to-back singles will do that. Cortes tweaks his elbow on the play and has to be removed. Since he's due up 2nd next inning, OF Mike Grigg (.299, 4, 31) takes his place. Jones singles, scoring Field. Ramos is getting nickeled and dimed to death all of the sudden. Yi gets under a 3-0 pitch and flies to right.

Twins 5, Yankees 2

Top 7th: Olthof is due to lead off the next inning so I'll try and stretch him to 7 today. Brookes grounds to 2nd. Grigg strikes out looking, Olthof's 7th of the day. Villasenor flails at a circle change in the dirt and strikes out to retire the side.

Twins 5, Yankees 2

Bottom 7th: Ross Poynor comes in to hit for Olthof, who finishes the day with 9 hits allowed in 7 innings for 5 earned runs with 3 walks and 8 strikeouts. Poynor hits one into left that falls for yet another cheap base hit. MacMillan lays down another pretty questionable bunt but this one at least works; Poyner is at second. Weiss makes contact with the first pitch he sees and hits it to short - Pellot throws him out by 3 steps. Cardenas hits a fliner into center that Villasenor makes a diving stop to turn the hit into an out.

Twins 5, Yankees 2

Top 8th: With the bottom of the Twins order due up, I'm going to save Yankees stopper Jesse Kelly (9-5, 3.01, 26 Sv) and bring in screwballing lefthander Nate Herod (4-2, 2.96) instead. The scroogie means that Herod takes down righties (270/325/427 triple-slashes) almost as well as lefties (253/287/480).

Reed hits what looks like a playable ground ball to short but Pat Jones can't keep up with it and it's an infield base hit. Marty Mendel hits a softer ball in Jones' direction, one which, frankly, looks like a good fielder would have a hard time with it. It's another infield hit. Angelo Ramos is due up next; he's only at 102 pitches and I know that all those hits he gave up in the last two innings were cheapo singles, so I'm going to leave him in (also he's probably as good at bunting as anyone I have on the bench). He sacrifies to the pitcher and moved Reed and Mendel to 2nd and 3rd. Morgenstern lifts a 3-2 pitch to right which is not quite deep enough to score the slowpoke Reed. Pellot makes it all academic by driving a 1-0 fastball into the left-field bleachers. Martinez makes it back to back jacks! And then Mike Brookes goes back to back to back!

All right, it's clearly time to remove Nate Herod. It was probably time to remove him two batters ago, but, you know, once a game gets to 8-2 it's mop-up time and Herod seemed as able to perform those duties as anyone else... anyway, the new guy's going to be Will Wright (0-0, 1.17 at AA Manchester), who missed basically all of the season with an injury. He builds city simulators in his spare time.

Grigg grounds out to shortstop.

Twins 10, Yankees 2

Bottom 8th: Meneses grounds out to short. Field flies to center. Tabb grounds out to second.

Twins 10, Yankees 2

Top 9th: Villasenor triples to lead it off against Will Wright. Stop torturing them, guys! Reed walks. Mendel reaches on an error by Pat Jones, Villasenor scoring on the play. For all his foibles, I'm pretty sure that was the first actual error Jones has committed at short this year. Ramos has only thrown 112 pitches ("only"!) but, like, it's a 10-2 game and they don't need him to go crazy out there. Instead, I'll pull him for a pinch hitter... Jon Barnes (.274, 3, 9), who emerged as their #2 PH man in the second half of the season (Mike Grigg was their #1, at least when he wasn't filling in in the outfield somewhere). Wright takes umbrage at something Barnes said to him and hits him, loading the bases with no out. Morgenstern hits a hard grounder to Jones at short, which he turns into the good old "pitcher's best friend", a 4-6-3 double play. Reed scores on the play. Pellot grounds to second.

Twins 12, Yankees 2

Bottom 9th: The Twins call on old man Melvin Melena (2-1, 3.67) to wrap this bad boy up. Melena appeared in 35 games in the regular season as a back of the bullpen arm. He doesn't have a ton left in terms of stuff but he's been just fine in low-leverage innings.

Jones flies out to center. Bobby Berg (.286, 3, 7) is called upon to pinch-hit for Yi, and he also flies out to center field. That brings up the pitcher, or rather, the man batting in the pitcher's place, C Jason Mooneyham (.213, 1, 10). He grounds out to second to end the game.