American League

If things ended today...Rangers @ Yankees, Red Sox @ Tigers

THE RACES
AL East
Yankees have clinched with a 95-61 record

AL Central
Tigers have clinched with a 91-66 record.

AL West
Rangers have clinched with a 91-66 record

AL Wild Card
Red Sox 88-68 --
Rays 86-71 2.5
Angels 85-72 3.5

The Race for Homefield Advantage
Yankees 95-61 --
Tigers 91-66 4.5
Rangers 91-66 4.5

Magic Numbers (to clinch playoff berth)
Red Sox: 3 to tie, 4 to clinch outright

Today's Matchups
Red Sox: @ Yankees, 4:10 PM. Jon Lester vs Freddy Garcia
Rays: vs Blue Jays, 7:10 PM. Jeff Neimann vs Ricky Romero
Angels: vs Athletics, 9:05 PM. Jerome Williams vs Guillermo Moscoso

National League

If things ended today...Diamondbacks @ Phillies, Braves @ Brewers 

THE RACES
NL East
Phillies have clinched with a 98-58 record

NL Central
Brewers have clinched with a 92-65 record

NL West
Diamondbacks have clinched with a 91-66 record

NL Wild Card
Braves 89-68 --
Cardinals 86-71 3
Giants 84-73 5

The Race for Homefield Advantage
The Phillies have clinched homefield advantage throughout the playoffs

Magic Numbers (to clinch playoff berth)
Braves: 2 to tie, 3 to clinch outright

Today's Matchups
Braves: @ Nationals, 1:05 PM. Brandon Beachy vs Chien Ming Wang
Cardinals: vs Cubs, 1:10 PM. Kyle Lohse vs Rodrigo Lopez
Giants: @ Diamondbacks, 8:10 PM. Eric Surkamp vs Ian Kennedy

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The Texas Rangers came into yesterday's game needing a win and an Angels' loss to clinch the AL West. They were in dominant position in the division anyway, but I imagine it's nice to get these things out of the way as early as possible. Things started out well against the Mariners, with home runs being hit by Adrian Beltre (his 29th), Josh Hamilton (his 25th) and Craig Gentry (the 1st of his career, and it was of the inside-the-park variety, no less). The M's started to mount a comeback, putting up 3 runs against Matt Harrison before he was pulled. The Texas bullpen held though, with scoreless appearances by longer-time Rangers Darren Oliver and Neftali Feliz (to close it out), with new-comers Koji Uehara and Mike Adams bridging the gap between the two. With the W in the books, only an LA loss was needed.

The Angels had Jered Weaver on the mound, but the Oakland A's countered with Gio Gonzalez, who ended up out-dueling the ace. Book-ending homers by David DeJesus (in the first) and Jemile Weeks (in the ninth) put the A's up 3-1, and gave the AL West title to the Rangers.

The Milwaukee Brewers were in the same position as the Rangers coming into the day. Prince Fielder and Ryan Braun both homered for the team, with the latter's being the game-winner in the 8th. Meanwhile, Yovani Gallardo mowed down the Marlins with 11 K's in 7.1 IP. The Cardinals dropped their game to the Cubs in similar fashion, with Alfonso Soriano delivering a game-winning three-run homer in the top of the 8th to break a 1-1 tie.

Arizona held a little more direct control, playing the team directly behind them. Joe Saunders scattered 9 hits over 7 IP while striking out only one, but allowed just a solo home run to the Giants. Matt Cain couldn't match him, and with the D'Back's 3-1 win they were able to clinch the NL West.

And just like that, all of the division winners are set - the earliest time in the Wild Card era that all such races were determined. Texas are winners for the second year in a row - the first time since 1998-99 since that's happened. On the other side, the Brewers take their first title since they did it in back-to-back years in '81-82 (the only other years they've done it). The Diamondbacks division title is actually their 5th in only 14 years of existence.

Also last night: The Braves puts some runs on the board against Stephen Strasburg to cut their magic number in the Wild Card race to 3; Brandon Morrow shut down the Rays, as the Blue Jays knocked them back in the standings; 18 hits (4 of which were homers) for the Royals as they blow out the White Sox 11-1; and much more.

What to watch tonight: Jon Lester looks to extend Boston's Wild Card lead, against Freddy Garcia and the Yankees; Jeff Niemann has a tough job hoping to keep Tampa Bay close, facing Rickey Romero and the Jays; and Justin Verlander goes for win number 25, squaring off with Jeremy Guthrie and the O's. Full schedule with probable pitchers here.

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In tonight's other completely-freaking-surreal clinching moment, the Arizona Diamondbacks have officially clinched the NL West Division title by vanquishing the San Francisco Giants.

Nobody expected the D-Backs to do much of anything this season due to their relatively young roster and the fact that their closer is...wait for it...JJ Putz.

The Diamondbacks beat the Giants 3-1 tonight to win the NL West behind a strong effort from Joe Saunders and solid relief pitching from David Hernandez, who allowed only one hit in his one inning of work.

In the three years I worked for the Milwaukee Brewers, first as a media relations intern and later as one of the world famous Klement's Racing Sausages, never in my life did I think I'd type the following words.

Say it with me folks -- the Milwaukee Brewers are the NL Central Champions.

The Brewers took care of their end of the deal by beating the Marlins 4-1 earlier in the evening, but needed a little help from their neighbors to the south, the Cubs, to clinch the NL Central. Unlike much of the season, the Cubs took care of business tonight, beating the Cardinals 5-1 in St. Louis to make it official.

I'm a journalist at heart, but I literally just got chills typing the sentence you see above. The picture at the top of the posting is of me in a sausage costume with pasty skin and sausages for calves making an appearance at a Milwaukee car dealership. I was born and raised a Cubs fan but at my very core, my heart resides in Milwaukee.

Simply put, today is one of the happiest days of my life as a sports fan.

In this week's edition of the Three Strikes Roundtable, we take a look at logo changes for teams, the two possible pitching triple crowns, and who we think will win the wild card races.

1. If your team changed their logo, would you prefer that they went with an older logo (see: Blue Jays), or a brand new one (see: Marlins)?
Matt Lindner: I'd want both of my teams to go old school. (Brewers, the team I worked for and Cubs, the team I grew up with) I want to see the Brewers go back to the old ball-and-glove logo permanently instead of just teasing it out. The powder blue road jerseys with the script "Milwaukee" and the "MB" glove logo are classics, something that didn't need to be improved upon. As for the Cubs, why not bring back the 1908 logos? Seems to make sense given that that's when the franchise peaked on the field.

Garrett Wilson: My team is the Angels and their logo hasn't changed all that much over the years with the exception of the ill-fated Disney era which involved a much different logo, pinstripes and the color periwinkle.  That was a uniform/logo that Angel fans have collectively decided to forget.  The team wisely went back to a permutation of the classic Big A with a halo around the top.  Now they have some of the classier unis in the league, in my opinion.  So, I think that strongly suggests that old school is always better. Personally, I'd love to see teams like the Brewers, Mariners, Astros and Padres all revert back to their traditional logos and/colors.  The Diamondbacks can stay the same though. Nobody should ever wear purple and teal uniforms.

Pat Lackey: Personally, the Pirates can trot out whatever professionally designed "Pirate" logo they want, but if they get rid of the Pirate "P," I'd flip out. Beyond that, I like the character of a lot of the old school logos that look like the guy from Section 402 made them on the back of the napkin, but new logos aren't universally bad. The Rays' current logo/uniforms are pretty classy, I think, though they obviously don't have an "old school" design to fall back on. Lots of times, though, the new logos try to please everyone and fail to please anyone, which ends up sucking the life out of them.

Daniel Moroz: I don't much like some of the older Oriole logos, so it would depend on which one they wanted to bring back (several look similar enough to the current one). If "brand new one" is anything close to in the vein of the new Marlins logo, I would definitely pass on that.

I had this long reflective post that I was planning on writing. The post was going to be something about the meaning of the weird, sad year that has been the Dodgers' season. The problem that I ended up having, was that the Dodgers' season began to shift. It began to change, to morph into something much less depressing. Clayton Kershaw and Matt Kemp began doing things (or, rather, they kept doing things). The entire episode began to turn in a strange and beautiful way.

Jon Weisman (the Vin Scully of sport bloggers) put the feeling, the weird melancholicly hopeful weird feeling into perspective.

via Dodger Thoughts

Sometime in the summer – I’m not going to try to figure out the exact date, because it doesn’t matter exactly when – my despair for the Dodgers reached a new and perilous level. It wasn’t anything new about ownership – those misgivings were long-established and steady. It wasn’t a sudden realization that they wouldn’t make the playoffs – without giving up hope entirely, I had settled in with that belief since May. It was the fear that the remaining 50-or-whatever-it-was games would be just punishing, that the bright spots would be too few and far between, that watching the Dodgers would become tiresome and writing about them an absolute chore. There would always be something to write about, but that was part of the problem. I wouldn’t be able to hibernate, to pull a summertime Groundhog Day and declare six more weeks of winter in August. I’d have to pay attention to a team from which I might want to take a long vacation. Instead, just about the opposite occured.

 His sentiment is probably echoed in the collective subconscious of many. It is the thought, the type of thing that makes baseball real and relevant. To be sure, it was not a great season for the Dodgers. It was, from the start, a painful season. It is easy to toss aside the feelings as silly and trite, but they still exist. A bad game, a bad series, a bad season, can truly wreck a summer. It shouldn't. It obviously shouldn't, but it can, and does, which is why I am glad Clayton Kershaw and Matt Kemp exist. Maybe, hopefully, possibly, next year will be different.

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American League

If things ended today...Rangers @ Yankees, Red Sox @ Tigers

THE RACES
AL East
Yankees have clinched with a 95-61 record

AL Central
Tigers have clinched with a 90-66 record.

AL West
Rangers 90-66 --
Angels 85-71 5

AL Wild Card
Red Sox 88-68 --
Rays 86-70 2
Angels 85-71 3

The Race for Homefield Advantage
Yankees 95-61 --
Tigers 90-66 5
Rangers 90-66 5

Magic Numbers (to clinch playoff berth)
Rangers: 1 to tie, 2 to clinch outright
Red Sox: 4 to tie, 5 to clinch outright

Today's Matchups
Red Sox: @ Yankees, 7:05 PM. Jon Lester vs Freddy Garcia
Rays: vs Blue Jays, 7:10 PM. David Price vs Brandon Morrow
Rangers: vs Mariners, 8:05 PM. Matt Harrison vs Anthony Vazquez
Angels: vs Athletics, 10:05 PM. Jered Weaver vs Gio Gonzalez

National League

If things ended today...Diamondbacks @ Phillies, Braves @ Brewers 

THE RACES
NL East
Phillies have clinched with a 98-58 record

NL Central
Brewers 91-65 --
Cardinals 86-70 5

NL West
Diamondbacks 90-66 --
Giants 84-72 6

NL Wild Card
Braves 88-68 --
Cardinals 86-70 2
Giants 84-72 4

The Race for Homefield Advantage
The Phillies have clinched homefield advantage throughout the playoffs

Magic Numbers (to clinch playoff berth)
Brewers: 1 to tie, 2 to clinch outright
Diamondbacks: 1 to clinch outright
Braves: 4 to tie, 5 to clinch outright

Today's Matchups
Braves: @ Nationals, 7:05 PM. Tim Hudson vs Stephen Strasburg
Brewers: vs Marlins, 8:10 PM. Yovani Gallardo vs Chris Volstad
Cardinals: vs Cubs, 8:15 PM. Chris Carpenter vs Ryan Dempster
Diamondbacks: vs Giants, 9:40 PM. Joe Saunders vs Eric Surkamp
Giants: @ Diamondbacks, 9:40 PM. Eric Surkamp vs Joe Saunders

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Three fringe playoff contenders were in action on Thursday night while the two teams they're chasing had the night off. That reduced Thursday to a simple equation for the Rays, Angels, and Cardinals: win, and stay in the thick of their respective wild card races, lose and risk falling by the wayside as the final two series of 2011 start. 

The Rays entered last night's action on a three-game losing streak against the Yankees with a 2 1/2 game deficit to the Red Sox in the AL wild card race. The math there is not difficult. The difference between a two and three-game deficit with six games left is gigantic. At two games back you have a realistic chance to force a tie with four or five wins in the last six games; that's much more unlikely at three games back.

At first, I thought the new Marlins logo that was leaked was a joke. Now, it appears to be the real deal.

In what can only be described as an attempt to further alienate their fanbase, sources have confirmed to ESPN.com's Paul Lukas (who remains the authority on all things uniform and logo-related) that the disaster you see above will in fact be the Marlins' new logo for the 2012 season when they officially become the Miami Marlins.

Joe touched on it earlier this week when the logo was initially leaked but I'm going to continue to hammer the point home. This thing has the potential to be one of the great all-time aesthetic disasters in the history of professional sports.

For most of the season, most other teams likely looked at playing the Orioles with some sense of relief. “Phew, enough with those Phillies and Yankees – let’s pick up 2-3 games here and get back on track.” Seeing several games against Baltimore down the stretch seemed like a nice way to extend a division or Wild Card lead, or to get a little closer to whoever you were chasing. Not so fast though, as the Orioles have been playing spoiler recently.

The Rays had won 7 of their last 8 games to move to 3.5 games behind the Red Sox in the Wild Card race when they went to play the Orioles. They made it 8 of 9 after game won, but lost the next two – allowing the O’s to come from behind in both games – and had to head to Boston down 4. From the perspective of an Orioles' fan, it was a tiny bit odd cheering in this series as wins by the O's helped the Red Sox (and I, like I imagine most O's fans, am more partial to Tampa Bay).

The Angels came into Baltimore having won four straight series – including one against New York. They were within 3 games of Texas in the AL West. Then they promptly dropped 2 of 3, despite having their three best pitchers on the mound (only Jered Weaver won, as Dan Haren and Ervin Santana both took losses). They left town 4.5 back and pretty much have to set their sights on the Wild Card.

For the Orioles, going to Boston usually ends poorly. The Sox hadn’t been playing well though – losing 13 of their last 17 (including 3 of 4 to the Rays) – and had seen their lead shrink to just 2 games. They demolished the O’s 18-9 in game two of the four-game set, in more normal fashion, but last all three of the other games – twice as the Birds came back in the late innings. They’re fortunate that the Yankees have won the first three games of their series versus Tampa Bay (setting them 2.5 back), but it has allowed LA to get into the mix (also 2.5 back now).

The Orioles head off to Detroit for four games that won’t mean much, but then come back home to host Boston for the final three games of the season. There’s a fair chance that the Red Sox will need to win at least one of those games to make the play-offs, which gives the O’s not only the chance to make life a little tougher for a contender, but to knock them out. Given how rough 2011 has been in Baltimore, that would be a pretty sweet way to wrap up the season.

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