I don't feel like doing a study or anything, but only one other time has one team swept a four game LCS and went on to face another team that went to 7 games in their LCS. That was 1988 A's, who lost to the Dodgers quite quickly.

But looking through other situations with moderate layoffs for one team, there doesn't seem to be any pattern.

Interestingly, in '87 he Twins beat the Blue Jays in 5 while the Cardinals took 7 exhausting games to beat the Giants.

he had lots of catching up to do. I'm sure SBG is a dam ready to burst any day now, too.

Thanks, Moss. Like Rhubarb_Runner said, I had lots of catching up to do.

I posted something similar to this on Gleeman, but I can't get to that site at work, so I'll paraphrase myself here.

I feel for Liriano and the Twins. From personal experience, I now know that even the most sophisticated tests don't always reveal problems.

I have a history of heart problems and had my first angioplasty and coronary stent a few years ago (at the age of 33). Last March, while shoveling snow, I had that same type of chest pain that I'd experienced before. I went to the emergency room and was immediately admitted. They did a large battery of tests, including a special type of cardiac test called a nuclear stress test. It's supposedly the cadillac of coronary diagnostics. All of these tests revealed no problems at all, so the doctors sent me home.

I went mountain biking a few days later and was really having trouble getting through the climbs. My chest was burning like never before, and I was riding by myself. But the doctors had just finished pronouncing my heart fit as a fiddle, so I struggled on and finished the ride.

The pains continued, until finally I couldn't even walk up my own stairs without chest pain. I saw my cardiologist (less than 10 days after the nuclear stress-test) and told him I wasn't feeling "right". He had, of course, already reviewed my test results from before. He gave me the option of doing another angiogram - "just to see what's going on in there". I opted to do so.

In that procedure, he found that my LAD was almost completely blocked (over 90%). This is the "widowmaker" artery, and is the same one that was blocked the first time I needed a stent. He inserted another stent to open the blockage, and I've felt fine ever since.

My point is only this: tests aren't 100% effective. I asked how that nuclear stress-test could reveal no blockages when in fact my LAD was almost completely blocked. I was told that this test in which I and the doctors had put so much faith is only about 90% effective.

So if Liriano isn't "feeling right", my initial reaction a year ago would have been, in so many words, to tell him to "suck it up and quit being a baby. The tests show that you don't have any new structural damage and only limited damage from the original injury years ago. You're fine; go out there and pitch."

Today, I would not make that statement. I'm much more inclined to believe that a person's awareness that something doesn't "feel right" is a powerful indicator that something is indeed wrong.

I don't know why the Twins don't schedule a simple exploratory procedure - not to do ligament replacement surgery or anything else reconstructive - simply to go in and "see what's going on." Isn't there an elbow equivalent to angioplasty - a procedure that simply lets the doctors see exactly what is going on in the elbow, instead of relying on less-than-perfect external diagnostics like MRI?

I'm not a doctor, obviously, so I don't know the answer. But it seems that such a procedure could be done with minimal recovery time if no problems are discovered. And then both parties would know exactly what the situation is. No more worrying, no more second-guessing - you know, for sure, what you're dealing with.

I wish for his sake they'd do that. He's 23, with a multi-million dollar career ahead of him, and he doesn't know why his arm hurts or what to do about it. The doctors have already told him that his arm is ok, but it doesn't feel ok. I know exactly what that's like, and it's not fun.

Sweet! I just downloaded MIE 7.0. My this site is so much nicer now.

Well, my browser choices at work are limited to IE6 or IE7. I use Firefox at home, and it is my preferred browser.

I think Simmons pretty much has the Vikings pegged in that column, too, (basically, a team that makes few mistakes, capitalizes on other teams mistakes, and will have difficulty beating truly good teams) but I think he overrates (8th in the league?) how far that sort of football can get you. Vikes might get a playoff spot, but they'll need a lot of good fortune if they're going to make any real noise.

One thing I've been thinking when I've seen other teams celebrate during the playoffs is that none of the other teams seemed to capture the sheer joy that the Twins had when they captured a playoff berth, and later, the AL Central title. In this case, I think I'm probably mostly being a homer, but the way in which you win something definitely plays a part in how much joy you take in it. Would we remember the '91 or '87 WS so fondly if they were sweeps? If there was no Game 6 heroism? No Jack Buck seeing us tomorrow night?

Probably not.

I guess my point is that for nostalgia's sake, it matters less what the aggregate numbers are, or even what the precise accomplishments were, but that you accomplished something, and that you did it dramatically. (And I'm convinced that 10 years from now, I'll remember that this was a damned good team and I won't really care what happened in the playoffs--they came back from 10+ GB in June, and they did it against two really good teams.) This year's Twins did that, and heck, this year's Cardinals did that, too, once they made it to the playoffs. They put their fans on some sort of wild roller coaster ride, and I doubt any of them would trade it for a 120-win season--though more impressive, it just wouldn't be as magical.

The regular season was devalued as a mere prelude to the playoffs the day Selig & Co. expanded to six divisions and adopted the wild card system. Has there been a really great pennant race since the AL West in ‘95? I can’t recall one. Some good ones in divisions where the wild card wasn’t in play, but no classic races come to mind.

Bingo. The WC is kind of a good idea for fairness' sake, but the 8-team playoff format completely devalues the regular season, and the WC robs us from any good races between two really, truly good teams, because any two really good teams are just going to lock up the Division title and the WC (see: 2006, Twins and Tigers). Instead, we get division "races" between teams that barely deserve to make the playoffs.

More people remember Johnson/Schilling, and the D-Backs beating Mariano Rivera in the World Series. That’s just how it goes.

But you remember those magical 116 wins, right? The regular season is for the hometown fans. The diehards who follow day-to-day. The national spotlight isn't big enough to shine on all of the great regular season accomplishments, but I don't think that means they don't matter. It just means they matter to a smaller subset of fans. I would've loved to see the Twins take the WS this year, but every single time someone (rightfully) counts out a team with a double digit deficit in the standings, I'll remember the 2006 Twins. Frankly, I don't care if anyone else remembers, but I'm not going to be forgetting this season any time soon.