especially with a fly ball pitcher like Baker.

Morales wasn’t called up until September, so he is the replacement for Morneau. As for Manship, there are simply 12 pitchers better than him available (I suppose Liriano is arguable, but he can be another LOOGy, if nothing else). My FanPost back in August about the postseason roster had him as a probable leave-off, and that was before Rauch and Mahay were acquired (although I anticipated 11 pitchers instead of 12).

I wasn’t saying they had no choice but to exclude Buscher and Manship; I was saying that they had no choice but to include 12 pitchers, because that’s what they had on August 31.

It’s not quite that simple – they can’t just pick and choose guys off the 40-man willy-nilly; however, after looking some more at the few resources I can find (the full rules for this are not published on the internet, that I’ve been able to find), I think I was a bit off with my earlier thoughts on the playoff roster. I was under the impression that the 25-man playoff roster was submitted on August 31, and injury replacements were made immediately before the playoffs.

However, the couple of places where I’ve found a cut-and-paste of the rules word it slightly different from what I’d thought – it appears that the teams get to make a list of postseason-eligible players, consisting of the 25-man roster as of August 31, plus anyone on the disabled or bereavement lists, and they choose from that list before the playoffs start. Players on the 60-day DL can be replaced with a player of the same position (pitcher or position player) who was in the team’s system on August 31 – I didn’t see a 40-man roster requirement, although I’d doubt that a player would be added to the postseason roster if he didn’t merit a September callup (although if I’m interpreting that right, it would be possible for a player to be added to the 40-man roster after August 31 and still make the playoff roster, as long as he was in the team’s minor league system then).

One other thing I got from this interpretation – the Twins may not have been stuck with 12 pitchers, if they had a position player or two on the 15-day DL that they could’ve added to the list of players eligible for the postseason. I think 12 pitchers is too many for the playoffs (it limits your pinch hitting options, especially in NL rules, and if you have to use that many pitchers, chances are that you’re not winning enough games to keep playing), but maybe that’s what the Twins wanted.

I think the talking heads are saying the same thing as you, but I get the sense that the meaning is quite a bit different. Here is my new most unfavorite line: “The Twins just have a bunch of ball players,” and what we mean by that is BLAH, BLAH, BLAH, BLAH. I think that I have hated this line the most. It is almost condescending inasmuch as it is said in a way to imply that the Twins really haven’t much talent but they hustle, slide into first base or whatever. It’s almost like that Twins don’t even deserve to be in the same stadium as the Yankees. I hope I don’t hear this line even one more time.

And one more thing that has been rubbing me the wrong way. Hey Talking Heads!!!! The Tigers and Jim Leyland have lost, so get over it!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Nothing against the Tigers or Jim Leyland, but its the Yankees-Twins!)