Unfortunately, the Twins weren’t able to take advantage of a number of opportunities to beat baseball’s best pitcher, Mr. Zack Greinke yesterday and take the sweep that I thought they would need.  Fortunately, the Tigers continued to play mediocre baseball and barely put up a fight in Chicago, leaving the Twins two games back with seven to play.

First, Greinke.  I’m in, sold, 100% positive about him.  He’s the AL Cy Young winner this year.   I could go into details on Greinke’s FIP, ERA+, strikeout to ball ratio, complete games, shutouts, ad infinitum, but I’ll leave that to more qualified people, namely, Joe Posnanski.  Posnanski has posted numerous arguments for Greinke for Cy, all of which I find extremely compelling.  For anyone who still clings to the notion that wins should have anything to do with this award, I offer the following three thoughts:

1) Greinke may not lead in raw wins, but consider his team.  Much like Brad Radke winning 20 games for the 68-win Twins in 1997, Greinke is gathering an impressive number of wins for the Royals this year.  To date, the Royals have won 64 games.  Greinke has been credited with 16 of those, good for a full 25% of his teams victories.  CC Sabathia, by contrast, has 19 wins for a team with 100 wins, good for 19% of his teams total.

2) Cy Young is different than MVP.  Cy Young isn’t about some abstract “value”, in which you can make different value arguments, like, “There’s more value in a good performance for a playoff team than a great performance for a mediocre team.”  It’s about the best pitcher.  Again, I could go into the advanced stats and whatnot, but I’ll just offer this anecdote.  Yesterday, the Twins had no shot against Greinke.  None.  A fastball that touches 98, a curveball that sneaks in at 71; he was absolutely untouchable.  He made Joe Mauer and Jason Kubel look silly at the most critical point of the game, getting Mauer to jaw with the umpire despite the fact that those balls were clearly in the strike zone.  This wasn’t a case of the Twins letting a pitcher beat them.  Greinke was in total control, period.

3) The more important “win” statistic to look at is Wins Above Replacement (that is, how many more wins a player gives a team over a readily-available, AAA-caliber player).  Greinke leads baseball with an 8.6 Wins Above Replacement.

In short, he’s the best pitcher in baseball, plain and simple.  This truly is one of the top 30 pitching performances in baseball history.  Playing on a bad baseball team is entirely irrelevant to whether Greinke is the best or not.  Now, getting back to the Twins.

Despite being owned by baseball’s best pitcher, Mr. Zack Greinke, the Twins were helped out in Chicago by the White Sox taking 2 of 3 from Detroit.  (Funny story – I saw a highlight of Gordon Beckham’s two-run shot the other night, and got all mad and cussed at the TV, until my wife said, “Um….that’s a good thing!”  Oh yeah…right.  Force of habit, I guess.)  The nice thing about this is that it doesn’t really change the Twins’ situation all that much.  Had they stolen a win from baseball’s best pitcher, Mr. Zack Greinke, they would head into Detroit one game back, but really, they’d still need to take 3 of 4 to avoid being a game back with three to play.  Granted, taking three of four now gets them only a tie, rather than a lead, but I think it’s safe to say the Twins have been playing for a one-game playoff.  Anything else is a bonus.

Aaron Gleeman points out that the odds for this series are a coin flip, with each team having a slight edge in two out of the four games.  With how well the Twins are playing, and how shaky the Tigers have been, Twins fans have to be excited about the local 9’s chances this week.

Personally, I’m thrilled.  For as frustrating as this season has been, this team has played excellent baseball since Justin Morneau went down on September 12th.  Having the capacity to respond to adversity as the Twins have should give Twins fans hope that they have a little extra to push the odds in their favor this week.  All you can ask as a fan is that your team play games that matter and that your team has a chance to win those games.  We’ve got that.  Gotta’ love September baseball.