In the Playoff Pulse series, our MLB editor takes on a hot October topic.

The White Sox and Angels avoided playoff oblivion Sunday night, but the odds remain long that either team will be able to advance to the American League Championship Series. Still, it's been done before. The Yankees came back from a 2-0 deficit in the division series against Oakland and the very Red Sox that Los Angeles is facing have climbed out of a similar hole twice.

So which trailing team has the best chance at coming all the way back to win their series?

First, let's take a look at the Game 4 pitching matchups. Of course, the team with the best chance to win two games will have the best shot at coming back in the series, but Monday's games are of paramount importance. After all, there is no Game 5 without a victory in Game 4.

Every four years, Major League Baseball's postseason intersects with a presidential election. This is one of those years. In the spirit of the season, we here at MLB FanHouse have divided the playoff teams up for a series of debates. Tom Fornelli and Eamonn Brennan discuss the ALDS between the Rays and White Sox.

Eamonn and I took a look at this series and broke it down into six key areas: Starting rotation, Bullpen, Defense, Lineup, Bench, and Manager. Then for good measure we throw in our five-star lock of the week predictions, because we're psychic mediums in our spare time.

All of the debating goodness after the jump.

Baseball is America's pastime, but had our forefathers enjoyed the modern conveniences of clocks, ball pumps, or haste, this pastime may well have been basketball or football. Instead, they had wood, leather, and a rudderless disposition. Baseball is Boring is a series of live blogs for folks who need irony and self-awareness to get through a game.


Those poor Detroit Tigers. Look, things are bad enough when people are predicting your going to go 162-0 in a season, and you end up finishing in last place behind the Kansas City Royals. Let's face it, the Tigers have been counting down the days until the season's end for a few months now. That was supposed to be yesterday, but just when they thought they were out, MLB goes and pulls them back in again.

Today they take on the Chicago White Sox in a makeup game that will prove to be a pretty important game in the scheme of things. With a win today, the Tigers will pull into a fourth place tie with the Kansas City Royals in the AL Central. If they lose, they are the sole proprietors of last place.

An entire season comes down to one game in Chicago on a rainy afternoon, and it's all after the jump.

In recent weeks the once formidable White Sox pitching staff has been pretty damn awful. After spending the majority of the season with the best ERA in the American League, White Sox starters have had an ERA of 6.75 in the team's last 20 games, and they've fallen to sixth in the league.

So is it that the staff is just going through a rut, and slogging through the dog days of summer, or is there a deeper mental issue? Is the pressure of a divisional race getting to them? If you ask Mark Buehrle it has nothing to do with any pressure, well, unless your Gavin Floyd. That's guy is a mental marshmallow.

''If anything, Gavin might be a guy that's affected,'' Buehrle said. ''[John} Danks is so laid-back, it doesn't seem like anything bothers him. Where Floyd, it seems like there's a little bit more that gets to him. A bigger situation or bigger game might get him more nervous, but Danks isn't a guy I worry about.''

Keep in mind that Buehrle is 8-10 on the season, while Danks is 9-4. Floyd is 11-6. Though I'm not saying that Mark is wrong in his assessment, I'm just wondering why he feels the need to say it publicly. Gavin Floyd is a pitcher that lets things bother him on the mound, and his confidence is extremely fragile, so questioning that in the paper probably won't do much to help it.

Especially when you already play for a team who has a manager that has no qualms what-so-ever about ripping you in public.

Maybe the All-Star Game is a meaningless to the players and just an excuse for Bud Selig to admire himself for a week. That doesn't mean that the selections should be stupid. Today, the MLB 'Haus gives you All-Star Grievances.

Grievance: Jermaine Dye not making the team. I swear in recent weeks I've become Jermaine Dye's publicist telling anybody who will listen that he is far and away the most undervalued outfielder in the game today. Still, I thought enough people knew about him to at least get him on to the All Star team. JD is hitting .308 and OPSing (not sure that's a word, but screw it, I'm angry) at .919 with 19 homers and 52 RBI. His only crime is that he plays in the American League where outfielders are raking this season, and that people still think the Yankees are good.

Grievance: Lack of White Sox pitchers and Joe Crede's selection. Now I'm probably going to come off as sounding like a bit of a homer here, but there just aren't enough White Sox on the team this season. They're in first place in their division, and lead the league in pitching, yet their only All Stars are Carlos Quentin and Joe Crede. While Quentin deserves the nod, Evan Longoria should have gotten Crede's spot. Also, as I mentioned, the Sox lead the league in pitching, yet not a single member of their pitching staff made the team. Does that make sense to you? Gavin Floyd is 10-4 with a 3.22 ERA and a WHIP of 1.12, John Danks is only 6-4 (it's not his fault the Sox average about .00003 runs every time he starts) but has an ERA of 2.52 and WHIP of 1.17. How neither of them make the team baffles me.

Grievance: Jason Varitek as the third catcher over A.J. Pierzynski. Great, another White Sox player. I know, I know, but if you look at the rest of the teams from the AL Central, everybody that deserved to be on the team is on the team (you could argue Carlos Guillen doesn't deserve his spot, but what other Tiger takes his place?). The Sox are the only team in the division to really get screwed here. Anyway, Varitek was chosen by his fellow players over Pierzynski even though he's only hitting .218/.300/.358 with seven homers and 27 runs driven in. Pierzynski, on the other hand, is hitting .296/.333/.442 with seven homers and 33 RBI. Oh, and he's the guy calling all the pitches for the pitching staff with the lowest ERA in baseball. Obviously, his personality is what cost him here, which is idiotic. Is the American League looking to win this game or hang out with friends?

While the All Star teams won't be announced until later tonight, we have a pretty good idea who most of the starters will be thanks to the fan voting. What we usually have to wait a bit to find out about, though, is who the starting pitchers will be in the game. That won't be the case this season, as word has leaked out that this years starting pitchers will be Cleveland's Cliff Lee and Arizona's Brandon Webb.

Cliff Lee, who had to fight for a job in Cleveland's rotation this spring, will be the starting pitcher for the AL, the Post reported. Lee is 11-1 with a 2.26 ERA.

He'll go against Arizona's Brandon Webb, who will be playing in his third consecutive All-Star game and getting his first starting assignment.

It's pretty hard to argue against either selection, as Cliff Lee has been one of the lone bright spots for the Indians this season, and Brandon Webb is, well, Brandon Webb.

In the American League, Terry Francona probably could have picked either Lee, Joe Saunders, Mike Mussina, Roy Halladay, and Gavin Floyd without getting too much flak for it. Other candidates in the National League included Aaron Cook, Ben Sheets, Edinson Volquez, and Tim Lincecum, but it looks like Webb's reputation preceded him.

While the Twins and Tigers are busy throwing fastballs at each other's heads this week, the White Sox are taking advantage of it by beating up on the lowly Cleveland Indians, and adding some cushion to their division lead in the AL Central. Still, even though the Sox have won six in a row, have the best ERA in baseball, and have crushed an American League-best 113 home runs, the team still has holes.

Considering that they're relying on two young pitchers without proven track records over an entire season in Gavin Floyd and John Danks, there's some speculation that Kenny Williams could be in the market for another starting pitcher. There's also the fact that the offense is too reliant on those home runs they hit, and could use some more speed on the basepaths.

None of this bothers Ozzie Guillen though, as he's perfectly content with taking his chances with his current roster.

"You have to crawl before you start running," Guillen said Tuesday while being careful not to declare the Sox a playoff-bound team. "This ballclub [can] compete and be in the playoffs, be alive in the pennant race. And if we get to the playoffs, I don't mind taking this ballclub to the World Series."

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups.

St. Louis Cardinals (23-15) at Milwaukee Brewers (17-19) - 2:05 PM ET

Milwaukee, already known for its consumption of beer and brats, has been the Tums capital of America this weekend. First, Jason Isringhausen blew a save on Friday after having the Brewers at two outs and nobody on in the ninth inning ... which led to Jason being demoted from the closers role. Then the very next day, there was Eric Gagne blowing yet another save, which was Gagne's ... oh I've lost count this season, how many blown saves is that? Gotta be between 50 and 80 (actually, he only blew a tie game in the ninth, but Gagne did get the loss). And that led Gagne to muse that maybe he should go the same path as Isringhausen. So can anybody here close today's game? Hey, at least extra innings will be fun.

If you thought what the White Sox violated blow-up dolls with baseball bats, you should see what they do to space heaters with them. Mark Buehrle didn't have a very strong performance to follow Gavin Floyd's near no-no on Tuesday night, as he allowed 7 runs in 5.2 innings and fell to 1-4 on the season.

Needless to say, Buehrle isn't too happy with the way the 2008 season has been going for him, and he let the frustration boil over after being removed from yesterday's game.

Moments after rookie Carlos Gomez hit a two-out RBI double to cap a five-run sixth-inning rally, Buehrle already was off the mound when he gave Guillen the ball.

Buehrle went to the dugout, grabbed one of Juan Uribe's bats and whacked it five times against a space heater and a dugout bench before tossing his cap and shaking his head.

"It was everything building up," Buehrle said after the Sox lost for the seventh time in eight games. "It was the way I pitched, the way we're playing. It was one of those games where you can't hold it back."

As of now, the League of People For Space Heater Rights haven't filed a complaint, so Buehrle or the White Sox haven't issued a fake apology for Mark's actions yet. When asked about it after the game, manager Ozzie Guillen had this to say.

"It's bull[bleep]. What Mark did to that space heater is [bleep]ing bull[bleep]. That space heater is the [bleep] of Mark Buehrle. Two weeks ago, it was the greatest [bleep]ing space heater in the [bleep]ing history of space [bleep]ing heaters. Now it's horse[bleep]. I'm tired of it. [Bleep]. [Bleep]. [Bleep]......[bleep]."

When you hear about a guy going 8 1/3 innings without giving up a single hit, it's usually safe to assume he had a pretty good night, right? Maybe most of the time, but not always. Here's Twins beat reporter La Velle E Neal III in his blog for the Star Tribune on what he saw:

If Gavin Floyd had pulled off a no-no against the Twins on Tuesday it would have been the sloppiest, most unjust no-hitter that I can remember.

Floyd was far from overpowering. In fact, I sent Joe C. a text message around the fourth inning remarking how Floyd couldn't get ANY breaking pitches or his change up, over for strikes. I was convinced that the Twins would sit on the fastball and start pounding him. [...] The Twins should have hit this guy. I know its easy for me to write that from my position but geez....

(Joe C., for those non-Twins fans reading this, is Joe Christensen, a fellow reporter for the Star Tribune.) Looking at the box score, Floyd walked only three guys while throwing 62 strikes in 105 pitches, so either he was getting more of the plate than Neal is giving him credit for or the Twins will swing at anything (which is more or less an organizational philosophy).

In any case, even if Floyd doesn't have complete command of his pitches, it's hard to deny that he's at least been (very) effectively wild. This is the second time that he's thrown at least 7 1/3 innings without a hit, and on the year he has a paltry 2.50 ERA while allowing batters to hit just .149.