Not inclined to fret right now

I'm not reading the comments attached to Joe C. and LaVelle's game stories because I'm assuming there's a sky-is-falling group -- however small -- that was overly worried about the Twins getting swept by Detroit while using their collection of thrift-shop lineups. The only time I got scared this weekend was when I was watching a friend's son play quarterback for St. Paul Central, which pretty much demolished The Blake School on Friday night, and I got a text from ESPN about Francisco Liriano leaving early Friday night with an undisclosed injury.

Needless to say, I imagined his arm falling off rather than the bug that sent him off in the fourth inning.

I'd just as soon see Carl Pavano and Brian Duensing have substandard starts this weekend instead of next week. My thinking-too-much side feels that nothing good can come from a solid perdormance in a game that doesn't really matter. That's how come I will be concerned when Baker or Slowey or Mijares make their postseason appearances, no matter how much they appear to get it together in their final regular-season innings.

Likewise, I will not lose sleep over the opponent in first-round playoff match-up or getting home field advantage for the first two rounds of the playoffs.

I got tweaked on that Sunday night when I made the mistake of watching the end of the Red Sox-Yankees game, entertaining the notion that maybe -- just maybe -- Boston would win Sunday night and the Yankees would have to battle their tails off to clinch the Wild Card against a frantic final-week comeback by their archrivals.

The Yankees rallied and I realized the silliness of getting caught up in sich speculation.

To get to the World Series, the Twins will have to beat two of these three teams -- Tampa Bay, the Yankees and Texas. I'll root for the Rangers to beat whomever (but not very hard) and not sweat anything else. That was a lesson reinforced in 2006 when the Twins avoided the Yankees in the first round of the playoffs -- and then got swept by Oakland, including Metrodome losses in Games 1 and 2.

1. Win the two games needed to clinch first-round home field even if Texas wins out in its final seven games.

2. Have Mauer, Thome and everyone else be as close to 100 percent health as possible by this time next week.