After last week’s power rankings marked the beginning of a singular focus on the playoffs—and with it the elimination from this space of teams no longer realistically in the playoff hunt—it was only a matter of time before we added another team to the graveyard.
The Twins needed to, at minimum, win three of a critical five-game series to give themselves a fighting chance at a playoff berth. Instead, they lost the first three contests before salvaging the fourth game Sunday. As a result, the team that led the AL Central from April 24 to Aug. 9 (and was tied atop the division as recently as Sept. 4) now has just a 1.3% chance of making the playoffs, per FanGraphs. Rocco Baldelli’s squad is six games out in the divisional race, with two teams ahead of them and 16 to play—plus 7.5 games out of the wild-card race. That’s enough to give Minnesota the boot, and leaves us with just 15 teams fighting for 12 playoff spots.
