• About two hours after the Twins completed their eighth-inning comeback against the Indians last night, the White Sox lost their eighth consecutive game, this time versus the A’s, which means the AL Central race is officially over. Kind of anti-climactic with two weeks left, but I’ll certainly take it. And it was funny to see Paul Konerko close out Chicago’s playoff hopes by grounding out with the bases loaded against Craig Breslow, who was waived by the Twins in mid-2008.
• Obviously securing home-field advantage throughout the playoffs is always a very good thing, but Cliff Corcoran of SI.com crunched the numbers and found that it’s likely not as important as conventional wisdom would have you believe. Since the current playoff schedule format was adopted in 1998, teams with home-field advantage have a 45-39 record in series, which isn’t all that impressive when you consider that they’re usually the superior team anyway.
