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Tiebreaker game 163 thread: Rays @ Rangers

The Orioles are all done, but baseball is not. Monday night, the Rays travel to Texas to take on the Rangers in a tiebreaker to determine who will be the second AL Wild Card team.

By Mark Brown
Ronald Martinez

Who are you rooting for in this game?

On one hand, there are the Rays, who have seemingly every player that is loathsome on a human level in all of MLB. There's Josh Lueke, Luke Scott, Yunel Escobar, and Delmon Young, all on that one team.

On the other hand, there are the Rangers, who... well, I don't know. They're so Texas, you know? I don't like them, but I don't hate them. Rather than the kind of game where it's time to root for a meteor, I can't even care enough to root for that. I am deeply ambivalent - as deeply ambivalent as, say. Rawls in the first episode of The Wire.

If you'd like some team-specific thoughts on the game, be sure to check out Lone Star Ball for thoughts from a Rangers perspective and DRaysBay for the Rays.

Another interesting wrinkle to this game is that Nelson Cruz, one of the players suspended 50 games for his connection to the Biogenesis scandal, is able to be activated for this 163rd game of the season. He did his time and now he is back, and eligible for the postseason as well, should the Rangers manage not to lose a second win-or-go-home game in their home park in two years.

The pitching matchup for this one-game tiebreaker is going to feature David Price, last year's American League Cy Young Award winner, against Martin Perez, a candidate for Rookie of the Year this season.

Your starting lineups:

TEXAS RANGERS TAMPA BAY RAYS
Ian Kinsler (R) - 2B Desmond Jennings (R) - CF
Elvis Andrus (R) - SS Wil Myers (R) - RF
Alex Rios (R) - RF Ben Zobrist (S) - 2B
Adrian Beltre (R) - 3B Evan Longoria (R) - 3B
A.J. Pierzynski (L) - C Delmon Young (R) - DH
Nelson Cruz (R) - DH Sean Rodriguez (R) - LF
Mitch Moreland (L) - 1B James Loney (L) - 1B
Craig Gentry (R) - LF Yunel Escobar (R) - SS
Leonys Martin (L) - CF Jose Molina (R) - C

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