-P- Congratulations to the Brewers, who made the playoffs for the first time since 1982. I've written about the Brewers a lot here because them and the Pirates are like two sides of the same coin, so there's no need to belabor the issue, because I'm repeating myself, and anyway a lot of the lessons are so simple even a child could learn them. To wit:

Goofus takes lots of apples from revenue sharing. Gallant grows nice things on the farm outside the windows of his house, then trades them to other kids for CC Sabathia. See? Easy!

Today, though, I marvel at Sabathia's exemplary pitching down the stretch. There's no way the Brewers would have made the playoffs without him. I wonder if the remarkable success of the Sabathia and Manny Ramirez deals (so far, at least) will encourage more teams to trade prospects next year at the deadline. 

-P- Big props to the Post-Gazette, who had a reporter on the scene for Pedro Alvarez's arrival at Pirate City in Florida yesterday.

-P- Taking a trip to Arbitrary-Endpointville, Steve Pearce went 8-for-25 with a double and three homers in his last six games. 

-P- How awful must it be to be the Tigers today? Months after trading their farm system for Miguel Cabrera, Dontrelle Willis and Edgar Renteria and becoming a popular preseason World Series pick, they have to play the White Sox in a makeup game that could decide not only whether or not the Sox go to the playoffs, but whether the Tigers finish dead last, or merely tied for last. Their pitching did them in--Justin Verlander had a mediocre year, Kenny Rogers and Nate Robertson were downright awful, and Jeremy Bonderman barely pitched.