Win first, football later

Tragic number update: Seven. The Twins won Saturday, and so did the Tigers, who bounced back from a 5-0 White Sox lead to win 12-5 and set Ozzie Guillen off again when he found his team watching college football games on TV afterwards:

"[Do] they think the season's over for them? Yes. If they think the season's over for me, no. And I'm going to make it clear. It's a bunch of [bleeps] out there watching football games like a piece of [bleep] with no pride the way they [bleep] play, and that's embarrassing."

And a few more choice sentences, the upshot of which may be: If the White Sox players want to watch NFL games in peace after their game with the Tigers today, they'd better win.

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The Twins haven't faced Zach Greinke this season. That changes today. The presumptive AL Cy Young winner is to finish his season with two starts against Minnesota.

I suspect that, if the Twins are to win the division title, they will need to find a way to win at least one of the the Greinke games.

Detroit has faced Greinke five times and won two of those five games — despite the fact that Greinke's ERA against the Tigers is 1.00.

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Poll results: Some blog readers believe.

We had 21 votes in this week's poll. Ten (47 percent) said the Twins will win the AL Central; nine (42 percent) said the Tigers; two (9 percent) said it doesn't matter 'cause the Yankees will win the first round easily.

The new poll is actually multiple polls —MVPs, Cy Young, Rookies of the Year. The Monday print column will be on Joe Mauer and the AL MVP race. I hope to blog in the coming week on the other awards, but I suspect a flu bug is about to grab me by the respiratory tract, so we'll see how energetic I am.