Now that the playoff match-ups have been set. There is no doubt that the A's have the most formidable 1st round foe in the Twins. They face the game's most dominant pitcher maybe twice. The Twins have the best home record in the bigs...and consequently the place has been the Athletics' house of horrors the recent past. Then even the pundits have a gloomy outlook. SI's Gennaro Filice calls the team AL Chumps and even this week's Sporting News Magazine mentions "The Athletics won't make it past the first round again - because they'll struggle against hard throwers."

Prognosticators would probably peg this as a sweep or a 3-1 series win by the Twins.

But hey, isn't it fun to root for the underdogs?

And the team has some positives too, like:

Frank Thomas can change a game w/ a thunderous swing of his bat.

The A's play 2 day games in Minnesota. The A's have won 2 of the last 3 day games they played in Minnesota. Haren's fabulous start against Liriano and Zito's 4-hit gem Aug 4th last year. Our team has the best day W-L record in all of baseball (40W-21L).

Our defense might have the slight advantage. Kotsay and Hunter cancel each other out, but we have great defenders on 3B, 2B and RF. Heck even Swish is good.

And our pitching rotation is at least 4-deep vs the looming Santana and the Boofs and the Garzas.

True the A's bullpen is suspect. And the team can hardly touch Nathan...but that too can turn around when the pressure's on. Joe Nathan has an 8.44 career post season ERA (5 games), so he's not that invincible. The Chisox rode a string of near complete game gems by its starters last year onto the World Series.

The A's can very well replicate that.

As the cliché goes: pitching and defense wins championships.