September 21, 2006
Central Stays the Same
All the fans who left the Baltimore game this afternoon missed a late inning comeback by the birds as Melvin Mora doubled in two in the bottom of the eighth to give the Orioles a 4-3 win over the Tigers. Despite five hits and five walks in six innings against Robertson, the Birds only managed two runs. Rodney blew the game in the eighth as he set up Mora with a hit batter and a single.
Neither the Twins nor the White Sox could take advantage of the loss however, as neither of them could score tonight. Josh Beckett out shone Johan Santana as he put up eight scoreless innings, walking none and striking out five. David Ortiz added two home runs to set the Red Sox record and stretch it to 52. Sananta will need to win his last two starts to reach 20 wins.
The White Sox lost by an even bigger margin. Rookie Jake Woods, with an undistinguished pro career so far, didn't walk a batter for seven innings and didn't allow a run to the White Sox. Adrian Beltre reached the 20 home run mark with a grand slam as the Mariners took the game 9-0.
So Detroit's magic number goes down one to ten. They're even with the Twins in the loss column, so even if Detroit wins all their games, they need a Minnesota loss to take the division.
Update: As a reader points out, the Tigers magic number over the Twins is 9, since if they tie the Tigers win the division based on winning the season series over Minnesota. However, since a three-way tie is still possible, I'm not sure that's totally correct.
"so even if Detroit wins all their games, they need a Minnesota loss to take the division"
I'm pretty sure this isn't true. In the case of a tie, the Tigers win the division, because they won the season series with the Twins 11-9.