Tigers make a huge move to try and fully bury Twins in AL Wild Card race

There are just six games left in the regular season, and push has officially come to shove for the Minnesota Twins. After clinging to the final AL Wild Card spot for the last month, despite going 11-22, the bottom has finally fallen out.

Minnesota was swept in a doubleheader on Sunday, which pushed the Twins out of the playoff picture for the first time in months. It was a seemingly inevitable outcome that became a sad reality, but now Minnesota is trying to claw its way back into a Wild Card spot at the last minute.

If the Twins are going to do that, they’ll need to leap frog either the Detroit Tigers or Kansas City Royals to sneak into October. Right now the best path seems to be picking off the sinking Royals, as the Tigers are not only on fire but made a move on Monday to bury the Twins and any other team trying to bump them out of the picture.

Tigers call up Jackson Jobe to help stay ahead of Twins in AL Wild Card

On Monday the Tigers announced that they would be calling up top pitching prospect Jackson Jobe to make his debut at the most important part of Detroit’s season. It’s something that directly impact the Twins’ chances of making the postseason in the most annoying way possible.

It’s not that the Twins are somehow being dealt a fatal blow by this — they’ve done the legwork on that themselves — it’s that this is a sign of things to come for the Tigers. Jobe is the Tigers top pitching prospect, the No. 6 overall prospect in baseball, and is still not even the highest ranked prospect in Detroit’s farm system.

Max Clark is ranked as the No. 1 Tigers prospect, which goes to show how loaded an already good team is with future talent.

The likelihood that the Tigers hold off the Twins is pretty high given how things have gone lately, but this is a shot being fired at the entire AL rather than just Minnesota. Jobe won’t be eligible for the postseason roster, as he wasn’t on the 40-man roster before the cutoff date, but that just makes his call-up even more insane.

Update: While under normal circumstances Jobe wouldn’t be postseason eligible, Tigers beat writer Evan Woodbery reported that the understanding is Detroit would be able to carry him into October. Jobe is being used as a replacement for Sawyer Gipson-Long.

Detroit emptying the tank to pull off an increidble finish to the season is the type of energy the Twins have lacked over the last month, and it’s a big reason why one team is on the cusp of something special and the other is staring into the abyss of the unknown.

The Tigers has a less than one percent chance of making the postseason in early August, while the Twins were close to chasing down the Yankees and Guardians for the best record in the American League. It’s hard to overstate how insane it is that the tables flipped so violently, but with just six games left in the season Minnesota is fading away while the Tigers are spicing up their already fantastic run with a dose of what the future holds.

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