Twins Win! Alexi Castilla Hits Game-Winning Single to End Marathon Tiebreaker

Duk at Big League Stew lists the 10 best plays of last night’s game. The list does not include TBS’ Chip Carey absolutely botching the call of one of the game’s biggest moments:

“Line drive, base hit! Caught out there!’

It’s a tough loss for the boys of Bless You Boys, but fans should be proud of what their team was able to accomplish:

In the end, it’s the Twins traveling to New York to fight for the right to go to the American League Championship Series. The Tigers will have to wait for 2010.

Over at our Twins Blog Twinkie Town, commenters are understandably excited over the tiebreaker win:

The comments are not very pretty at SBNation’s Bless You Boys:

There’s always next year, right?

After Wilkin Ramirez and Ryan Rayburn began the top of the eighth with two walks, Ron Gardenhire did something he probably should have done at the start of the eighth: he brought Joe Nathan in.

Good idea. Nathan held the runners and managed to get the Twins out of the inning with no damage done. Score remains 4-4.

Magglio Ordonez enjoys high fastballs. Matt Guerrier just pitched him one. The ball went far, far away: Ordonez blasted a game-tying homer to bring the score even in the top of the eighth. Excuse us the cliche, but this is October baseball. More scoring changes, please! (We don’t mind the typing. This is fun.)

Minnesota pandemonium? See what we did there? If you’re watching the game, you didn’t need the prompt. You get it.

Those of you not watching, what’s happening is that Orlando Cabrera just hit a go-ahead two-run shot to left off of Zach Miner, and the Twins have taken a one-run lead in the top of the seventh. Now Miner is stuck facing the heart of the Twins lineup. This could get worse before it gets better.

In his first at-bat of the game, Miguel Cabrera launched a double into the left-center gap to lead-off the inning. He was boo’ed by the Twins’ fans when he came up to bat. Which, as Yahoo!’s Dan Wetzel points out, makes no sense:

Cabrera was later stranded at third.

Ron Darling, who is generally insufferable if you’ve had the displeasure of listening to him call a game, worked in a mandatory Brett Favre mention right before the Tigers went down in order in the top of the first. Scott Baker K’d one — Polanco on a nasty hook that froze the Tigers’ second baseman.

The Twins managed a double from Joe Mauer, but that was where their offense ended.

For those wishing to dive into discussion with fellow Tigers or Twins fans, you can do so at Bless You Boys for the Detroit people, and at Twinkie Town for the Minnesota fans.

Also, today’s official line-ups are as follows:

According to Accuscore, if today’s game was played 10,000 times, the Twins would win 62% of the time:

Of course, today’s game will only be played once, so do with this bit of technologically produced prognosticating what you will. Certainly the fact that they have Miguel Cabrera averaging 1.1 hits per simulation kills some of the credibility. He’s 1 for his last 15.

FoxSports.com has six storylines for today’s one-game playoff, but the Tigers vs. History is clearly the most intriguing (aside from the most obvious of storylines: who will be in the playoffs vs. who will go home):

That’s the sentiment from Tigers’ blog Bless You Boys, who hope Tuesday’s one-game playoff with the Twins will do more than just clinch a playoff spot. It’ll exercise some demons:

At least that’s the mood from SB Nation’s Twinkie Town: about the Twins, who are playing Tuesday’s 5 p.m. tiebreaker game “where it should be played: in the comforts of the Dome.”

Money quote:

That’s a lot of Ts. Minnesota and Detroit will play for the AL Central title, and a playoff berth, at 5 p.m. Eastern (that’s 4 p.m. Central, with regards to the teams involved).