The final weekend

The Twins obviously have no margin for error. They also have no good option to start tonight, and they face Zach Grienke on Saturday.

Apparently Jeff Manship (right) starts tonight, Manship and a cast of thousands. I figured after Liriano's disaster last Sunday that Manship would get the call, but ... I suspect he can become a useful major league starter someday, but that day is not here.

As I understand it, the matchups for the final series:

Friday

Kansas City at Minnesota: DiNardo (0-2, 7.52) vs. Manship (0-1, 5.81). Wow, a matchup that might favor Manship.

Chicago at Detroit: Peavy (2-0, 2.25) vs. Jackson (13-8, 3.38). Peavy's numbers are AL only. Jackson's August ERA was 4.45; his September ERA, 5.08. He's shot way past his career high in innings, and things are falling apart for him.

Saturday

Kansas City at Minnesota: Greinke (16-8, 2.06) vs. Blackburn (11-11, 4.08). Greinke is the unanimous pick for AL Cy Young in the poll. Blackburn will be working on three days rest for the first time in his brief career. He's 1 1/3 innings short of 200.

Chicago at Detroit: Garcia (2-4, 4.78) vs. Figaro (2-1, 5.74). The Tigers are holding back Rick Porcello after the 20-year-old threw 111 pitches against the Twins. Garcia's stats don't look like much, but he's impressed the Sox enough that he's penciled into their 2010 rotation.

Sunday

Kansas City at Minnesota: Hochevar (7-12, 6.24) vs. Duensing (5-2, 3.69). Hochevar is either brilliant or awful. Duensing is coming off the worst start of his brief career. It's possible the Twins would use Carl Pavano on three days rest instead if this game means something.

Chicago at Detroit: Danks (13-10, 3.69) vs Verlander (18-9, 3.45). The Tigers really don't want Verlander pitching Sunday. They'd rather save him to open against the Yankees.

Here's the Detroit Free Press' take on the matchups on the Tigers end of things. I think Michael Cuddyer's right on the Sox pitchers — these are the best the Twins could hope for.

The odds are definitely against the Twins, but these matchups suggest it's not impossible.

Poll and a Peavy sighting

The poll on which one of the current middle infielders is the best bet for 2010 drew 18 votes.

The leader was: None of the above. Six respondents (33 percent) wanted a completely fresh middle infield.

Five (27 percent) said Alexi Casilla; three (16 percent) Brendan Harris; and two each (11 percent) want Orlando Cabrera and Nick Punto.

Let it be noted here that Ron Gardenhire is going with Cabrera and Punto in this late-season run. They're also the oldest of the five middle infield choices he has on hand (including Matt Tolbert, who I didn't include in the poll).

New poll up.

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Jake Peavy (above) on Saturday made his much-awaited White Sox debut, about seven weeks after Chicago traded four pitchers for him and far too late for him to make a difference in the divisional race.

So the slumping Sox promptly exploded for 13 runs, and the Chicago Tribune story suggests his presence sparked the offense.

I'm guessing the presence of the Kansas City Royals pitching staff had more to do with it.

Why the trade deadline is overrated

Each of the three teams that thought a month ago it had a legit shot at the AL Central title made deals just before the July 31 trading deadline. Two made waiver deals for significant veterans shortly after the trading deadline.

Here's how the players involved have fared thus far:

Detroit: Added LHS Jarrod Washburn (right) from Seattle. With the Tigers, he's 1-2 in six starts, ERA of 6.81. The Tigers have managed to win four of the six starts. Run support is wonderful.

Minnesota: SS Orlando Cabrera came from Oakland before the deadline; RSH Carl Pavano came in a waiver deal form Cleveland shortly after.

Cabrera is hitting .259 with a .289 on-base percentage since joining the Twins; he ended Monday game with one hit in his last 14 at-bats. As was said here when the Twins traded for him, he really doesn't belong at the top of the order.

Pavano has made five starts for the Twins, going 2-2 with a 4.06 ERA. The Twins won three of those five starts, scoring an average of 10 runs in the three.

Chicago: RHS Jake Peavy OKd leaving San Diego literally seconds before the deadline. The Sox then landed OF Alex Rios from Toronto on waivers in August.

Peavy was injured at the time of the trade and has yet to throw a major league pitch for the White Sox; his rehab assignment was extended when he took a liner off his pitching elbow. The Chicago Tribune reported late Monday that the Sox didn't yet know when he would try to pitch again.

Rios has played in 15 games with the Sox, going 10 for 56, a dismal .179 batting average.

What's more, picking him up probably put Chciago in a bit of a financial bind. According to USA Today last week, White Sox GM Kenny Williams cleared the Peavy deal and its financial implications with ownership first, but didn't with Rios, because he figured there was no way Toronto would just let the outfielder go. But the Blue Jays were delighted to dump the $59.7 million guaranteed Rios on the White Sox.

Conclusions: None of them are stellar.

The Twins fared better with their pickups, at least in August, but Pavano's wins came with lots of run support; the Twins probably would have won those games without him. Cabrera isn't helping the lineup in the No. 2 slot.

Detroit's not getting much out of Washburn other than innings; again, the wins came because the bats came alive.

The White Sox would have been better off sitting on their hands — certainly so far, but perhaps over the long run, considering how much money they now have tied up in Peavy and Rios.

Notes from the division

It's a division race nobody can take control of.

The first-place Detroit Tigers have now lost 10 straight road series. And now they go to Anaheim to face the Angels.

The second-place Chicago White Sox today begin what could be a killer road trip — Yankees, Red Sox, Twins. Ten games that Mark Buehrle says could be "make or break."

The third-place Twins? Three games against the kiddie-corps Baltimore Orioles. You may not recognize a lot of the names on this roster, but they are young, (I think there are seven rookies on the active roster, and just six players 30 or older), talented, and just took two of three from the White Sox.

Yes, the Twins are 4.5 games out, and their weekend sweep was against a decidedly unimpressive Kansas City bunch. But they ain't out of this thing yet.

* The Twins sent Anthony Swarzak and his 6.25 ERA back to Triple A. Newcomer Armando Gabino, who spent most of this season in the Rochester bullpen, is to start Tuesday. Good luck with that.

* Buehrle (after Sunday's loss, photo above) since his perfect game on July 23: 0-4, 5.85.

* When the White Sox traded for Jake Peavy just before the deadline, they held out the notion that he'd be ready to roll for this road trip. Not gonna happen.

* He's no Peavy, but there's chatter that Boof Bonser might pitch in September.

Big bucks on the South Side

First it was Jake Peavy. Now it's Alex Rios.

The Chicago White Sox on Monday landed a very pricey outfielder on a long term deal — as in $59.7 million over the next five years. They got Rios for nothing — or more precisely, the Toronto Blue Jays handed his contract off and figured they were better off with the (almost) $12 million a year.

This follows the Sox's shipping four pitching prospects to San Diego just before the trading deadline for the crippled Peavy, who is to be paid $48 million for 2010-12 with a $22 million option(and $4 million buyout) for 2013.

Rios has been a right fielder for most of his tenure in Toronto, but that was largely because the Jays had Vernon Wells in center. When Wells was injured — and he has missed considerable time the past four seasons — Rios generally shifted to center. And that should be what he does for the Sox, although Ozzie Gullen does seem to like Scott Podsednik more than I think is warranted.

The Peavy and Rios moves mark major financial commitments down the road. One assumes the Sox will let Jim Thome and Jermaine Dye walk after this season, but still ... assuming that the White Sox have a $100 million payroll each of the next three years, Peavy and Rios figure to account for almost 25 percent of it.

Most organizations treasure financial flexibility. The White Sox just burned much of theirs.

Views on the AL Central trades

Kenny Williams just made the dumbest trade in baseball history or one of the smartest. The health of Jake Peavy (left) will be the deciding factor, and nobody has labeled him the second coming of Mark Prior.

— Chicago Tribune baseball writer Phil Rogers in Saturday's column

If Toronto ace Roy Halladay had gone to the Angels or Red Sox, his new team could have outpitched anyone in a series in this year's postseason. But Halladay went untraded. Now it's the trio of (Justin) Verlander-(Edwin) Jackson-(Jarrod) Washburn who can out-pitch any other AL team and lead the Tigers to victory in a playoff series. That is, presuming the Tigers can score at least a few runs.
— Detroit Free Press Tigers beat writer John Lowe in Saturday's column

...(O)f the teams that spent July selling off, nobody reeled in the quality haul of prospects the Indians did. They collected six solid young players who are either big-league-ready now or will be shortly (Chris Perez, Justin Masterson, Carlos Carrasco, Lou Marson, Jason Donald and Jess Todd). And they built both the (Cliff) Lee and (Victor) Martinez deals around younger, 6-foot-5 flame-ballers who both project as No. 1 starters — Jason Knapp and Nick Hagadone, respectively.
— ESPN.com's Jayson Stark on the Cleveland Indians

(The White Sox are) going to show up on a lot of other people's "Winners" list after pulling off that sneaky Jake Peavy deal about four seconds before the deadline. But is "winner" really the right term for a team that just dealt a big package for a guy who (A) might not throw a pitch until mid-September (if then), (B) is going from the NL to the AL, (C) is moving from Pitching Heaven (Petco Park) to a pitcher's worst nightmare (The Cell) and (D) is adding more than $55 million to the payroll through 2012?
—Stark again.

More on the trading deadline

This blog's readers poll points to the middle infield as the biggest weakness on the Twins.

My belief all season has been, and remains, that it's the bullpen depth.

Friday's 11th inning meltdown (six runs) underlines that belief.

Bobby Keppel: A leadoff four-pitch walk, two singles, no outs. Gone.

Jesse Crain: Three singles, one walk, no outs. Gone.

R.A. Dickey: A single, then — finally — three outs.

The first two guys are the top alternatives to Jose Mijares and Matt Guerrier, who have been quite good this year but are in danger of being overworked.

I don't have a serious argument with the Orlando Cabrera trade; obviously, the middle infielders (Nick Punto, Alexi Casilla, Matt Tolbert, even Brendan Harris) haven't hit.

But I have more confidence in Punto and Casilla than in Keppel and Crain.

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The Twins weren't the only AL Central contender wheeling and dealing Friday before the nonwaiver trade deadline.

Detroit traded for Jarrod Washburn (above); the White Sox finally got Jake Peavy.

The Washburn trade doesn't strike me as much of an upgrade for the Tigers. They gave up Luke French , like Washburn a left-handed flyball pitcher, and a minor leaguer who didn't figure to be a factor for Detroit this year.

Washburn, unlike French, has a track record. He's racked up far better numbers this season than in recent years (2.64 ERA). Washburn has been aided considerably this year by the Seattle outfield defense, which frequently features three legit center fielders. The Detroit stadium is just as spacious as Seattle's, but the Tigers' outfield speed, especially in the corners, don't compare.

The Twins were hot for Washburn last year, a notion that struck me then as borderline insanity. He's been far more effective this year, but even if he maintains his current success, I won't criticize the Twins for staying away this summer.

The Peavy trade may not do anything to help the Chisox this year. The former NL Cy Young Award winner has been on the DL since early June with a strained tendon in his foot; before the trade, his agent said there was no timeline for his return. Now Peavy is talking about being ready by the end of August.

Meanwhile, the White Sox lose a piece of their current starting rotation in Clayton Richard. And a first-rate pitching prospect in Aaron Poreda.

And Peavy has benefited mightily from pitching in a very pitcher-friendly home park in San Diego. Last season, for example, he had a home ERA of 1.75 and a road ERA of 4.28. Now he's going to have a launching pad for a home park.