I really thought the Tigers were going to come away with their second consecutive series, but a nice pitching performance by Jason Johnson went to waste this afternoon. They got to Troy Percival in the top of the ninth, but the couldn’t get the run across to tie things up.

In all, a 3-3 split on this final west coast swing wasn’t too bad, considering the competition they faced. Now they make a stop in Chi Town to see if they can play spoiler in their own division. With all of the games they have left against the White Sox, they could actually finish ahead of them.

I’m not sure if they just got old, or what, but what’s happened to Arizona is a little surprising. This is a team that won it three years ago, and has been in the playoff picture for at least the last five. They didn’t even pull a Marlins by disbanding their team either. At least Randy Johnson keeps plugging away, as he had another nice outing, and went over the 200 strikeout mark for the twelth time in his career. It will be interesting to see who finishes second, him or Roger Clemens.

For the second straight season, it looks like nobody is going to hit fifty homers. A couple of players have outside chances, but we’ll see. Whoever does top it, won’t top it by much. Of course if Barry Bonds actually got pitched to, he’d be hitting .400 and would probably have 55 already.

The hard part about picking the guy who will come in second place to Bonds in the MVP balloting is which Cardinal to pick. Scott Rolen might get the voters nod, but at this point, Jim Edmonds gets my vote. All I have to say is, he has a better OPS then Albert Pujols, which is incredible based on how good Pujols is. But overall, the Cards have three players (Edmonds, Rolen and Pujols) with an OPS above 1.000.

The Wildcard races are going to be very interesting as going into today, you had two three way ties. It’ll also be interesting to see who comes out on top in the AL Central as Cleveland is making things very interesting.

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