And That Happened

Reds 3, Astros 2: If you’re gonna clinch the division, do it on a walkoff jack. Way to go Jay Bruce. Way to go Cincinnati Reds. Cincinnati was a great baseball town. Maybe still is a great baseball town. Definitely can be a great baseball town going forward. But it needed this division title to cleanse itself of the negativity that has pervaded Reds baseball for so many years. Not so much the team itself, but the fans and their relationship to it. It needed guys like Joey Votto and Jay Bruce and Brandon Phillips and, yes, Dusty Baker, to remind the town of how fun baseball really is.

Yankees 6, Blue Jays 1; Rays 5, Orioles 0: With these wins the Yankees and the Rays clinched playoff spots of their own. Both CC Sabathia (8.1 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 8K) and David Price (8 IP, 6 H, 0 ER, 8K) pitched gems. Lots of people will no doubt look at these games and decide that nice lines in clinching games = big money and put more steam behind what had been flagging Cy Young cases for each of them.

Mariners 3, Rangers 1: But anyone tempted to do so had best take heed: Felix Hernandez is still awesome: 8 IP, 5H, 1 ER, 5K). Will he start on Sunday, or was this it? Justin Smoak with a two-run homer that put the M’s up for good. Here’s hoping — for M’s fans’ sake — that this is a harbinger of thing to come, not just some weird spite thing against the Rangers.

Braves 3, Marlins 2: Eric Hinske’s pinch hit, two-run jack keeps the Braves on top in the wild card race. It was a another skin-of-their-teeth win, with Brooks Conrad (big RBI triple late in the game) and Melky Cabrera and Rick Ankiel (big defensive blunder, striking out with a runner on third with less than two outs) doing those things they do best.

Cubs 5, Padres 2: Alfonso Soriano hit two homers and the Padres bats continued to slumber. San Diego is now a game and a half back of the Braves in the wild card and are two back of the Giants with five to play.

Giants 4, Diamondbacks 2: Juan Uribe had a homer and Pablo Sandoval got a couple of hits, as the Giants moved one game closer to the playoffs. Sandoval: “Five more games. We have to play hard. Don’t get comfortable.” Nothin’ personal, but I have this feeling that Sandoval spends a large portion of his day trying to get comfortable.

Dodgers 9, Rockies 7: And so it ends for Colorado. All of these losses to the not-so-good teams in the last week — the Dbacks and Dodgers — may have put the final nail in the coffin, but their overall lack of consistency over the course of 162 games is the real cause of death. You can’t depend on a month’s worth of great play and do very well in this game.

Mets 4, Brewers 3: A two-run homer for David Wright and a two-run, game-winning double for Ruben Tejada. And Prince Fielder made a great defensive play in this one. That’s the first time I’ve ever written that. Now watch: per the Jayson Werth thing, Boras will start touting him as a centerfielder.

Nationals 2, Phillies 1: A walkoff homer for Adam Dunn against a Phillies lineup that I would have expected to have more bench players than it did a day after clinching. Howard, Utley, Rollins and Ibanez all got the start. Roy Osawalt did too, but he was yanked after 66 pitches, so this was clearly a less-than-100% outing for him, by design.

Royals 10, Twins 1: OK, I made a bit of fun of Ron Gardenhire for worrying about the Twins’ effort lately, but this is probably a legitimate concern at this point. Kila Ka’aihue hit two homers and had four RBI.

Pirates 7, Cardinals 2: The Cards were eliminated before this game was over thanks to Jay Bruce’s heroics in Cincinnati. Not that Cardinals fans knew it. According to several Cardinals writers who were tweeting during the game, the Cards out of town scoreboard wasn’t updated to show the Reds score for some time after it happened. The first sign to the crowd that the season had become a formality was the PA system blasting R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It.”  Classic.

White Sox 5, Red Sox 4: Boston no doubt learned of their elimination in mid-game as well. Dayan Viciedo won it for the Chisox on a pinch-hit walkoff RBI single. Oh, and Daniel Bard blew a save in this one, so put that in your back pocket as you start gearing up for Boston’s hot stove season.

Angels 4, Athletics 2: I hope Peter Bourjos can hit in this league, because I’d sure like to see him do this sort of thing for a long time.

Tigers vs. Indians: Postponed: Let us keep our feet in wool slippers and mix hot punches–and talk about mail carriers and messenger boys slipping along the icy sidewalks. Let us write of olden, golden days and hunters of the Holy Grail and men called “knights” riding horses in the rain, in the cold frozen rain for ladies they loved.