And now, a word from the basement of the AL Central.

Hi there friends!

Last time we talked, I was pointing out how the Twins are still in it.** But now, with just over a month left in the season and 17 games out of first in the bottom of the not so good AL Central, we might need to talk about the harsh reality that the Twins might not make the post season after all.

**It seems that I need to point out that the aforementioned “still in it” post was listed under our satire/irreverence category. Not everyone got the memo.

Fine. I’ll admit it: I’m pretty sure the Twins aren’t going to be flying a 2021 flag in the collection of post season flags out in left field.

Not helping the cause? Kenta Maeda might be broken.

As we’ve started moving toward the end of a truly painful season, we’ve taken to just enjoying games for the sake of being at the ballpark and watching the Twins become spoilers as they’d taken series wins against all of the AL’s leading teams. (Yankees are #2 in the AL East so forget that mercifully-shortened-by-a-hurricane shitfest of a series). Once the Twins traded Berrios, our hopes turned to 2022 and building a rotation around Kenta Maeda. But now Maeda will probably need Tommy John surgery (don’t quote me, I’m just assuming based on the Twins luck this season). Cool. Cool cool cool cool cool.

To add insult to injury.. pour salt in the wound.. lemon juice in the paper cut.. all those painful things? A few minutes after I’d heard the Maeda news, and resigned myself to knowing that the Twins are probably dunzo for the season, I opened Amazon to buy something and saw this:

I know Amazon does this a lot and does it in order to sell me all the things from A to Z. I know this. But I feel like Bezos himself put this in my Amazon feed, adjusting the “Who will win?” question in his mind to “The Twins winning? LOLZ”.

Currently, the Red Sox are sitting in the number one Wild Card spot, next to their division rival Yankees, with the A’s VERY close behind them. They’re not going to take it easy on our boys at all. They might be third in their division but that doesn’t mean they suck. Not at all. The AL East is far more dominant than the other divisions - with the fourth place Blue Jays still above .500 and not yet out of Wild Card contention themselves. (We are all thankful to 5th place Baltimore for making Twins fans feel less shitty these days.)

Granted, the pitching matchup is probably pretty even with our new baby Griffin Jax and the almost as equally-green, just-recalled-from-AAA Tanner Houck taking the mound. And the Twins, specifically ¡hip-hip-Jorge! Polanco, have been scoring some very clutch runs, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the Twins steal another series from a contending team. I don’t know if it’s the rainy weather or the mere exhaustion of living life in 2021 wearing me down, but I, the perpetually silver lining seeking optimist on the Twinkie Town staff have (almost) zero faith that the Twins will continue to play spoiler anymore, let alone leapfrog up to the third place spot in the AL Central.

So I’ll answer your question, Amazon: the Red Sox. The GD mother forking Red Sox will win tonight.

(And I say this hoping that I’m jinxing it and the Twins spoil it. Because I might have lost hope, but I’m still superstitious AF.)

xoxo,

Marea