AL CENTRAL CHAMPIONS!

For the first time since 2010, which feels like a lifetime ago, the Twins are division champions.

Thank you to the White Sox for the assist tonight. There's a certain tasty irony to the Indians division hopes being doused by a loss to a bottom feeder team.

There are still a few milestones left within reach for this Twins club. They need 2 more wins for 100. They sit at 299 homeruns, tied with the Yankees, and we have 1 more game left than they do.

At last though we can truly exhale. If there is a downside to this season it's that so much of it has been spent freaking out about the blown division lead. I've just been so paranoid since about the middle of June about the Twins blowing this thing.

And I'm also dreading another October drubbing by the Yankees. But whatever happens next month there's a lot of value in what the Twins did this year. This stuff doesn't happen around here often.

So much awful baseball from 2011-2018. A little blip in 2015 and then a flukey run to the wild card in 2017 was all we had. But this team is a legit excellent team.

To sit at 98 wins and counting is a testament to the talent on the team, but also to the ability to grab wins when not everything was clicking. Just these last couple games in Detroit have been pretty ugly. But the Twins have had a lot of significant injuries, particularly to the bats. Cruz, Garver, Rosario, Sano, Gonzalez and Cron have all missed significant time. Buxton obviously is gone.

And winning 98+ with a pitching staff that's been kind of a mess all year is also unheard of. The bullpen was SO awful early, yet has become a strength. We got Martin Perez to 10 win ffs.

It's been a very memorable season, and fingers crossed there's still some highlights to go.