Say what you will about the Vikings’ 21-13 win against Carolina on Sunday, but you do have to say that if Mike Zimmer could program his dreams, Sunday’s game would be about what he would dial up. To wit:

1) The Vikings allowed only 232 yards to the Panthers, sacked the quarterback five times, and returned a fumble for a score. 2) The offense ran only 42 plays, and 23 of them were running plays - and they averaged 5.9 yards per carry. 3) Kirk Cousins threw two interceptions, showing that quarterbacks are untrustworthy and flighty, and confirming everything Zimmer believes about offense.

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The Twins lost 2-1 on Thursday afternoon, proving that even the gravity well of shame that houses the Oakland Athletics is not enough to overcome the team’s firm commitment to not scoring any runs when Sonny Gray is on the mound.

Gray ends the year with 184 innings pitched, 183 strikeouts, and a 2.79 ERA. Except for throwing many fewer innings, these numbers are fairly comparable to Johan Santana, when he was winning Cy Youngs; for example, here’s Santana’s Cy Young season in 2006, compared to Gray’s 2023:

Santana ‘06: 233.2 IP, 9.4 K/9, 1.8 BB/9, 2.77 ERA, 3.08 FIP
Gray ‘23: 184 IP, 9.0 K/9, 2.7 BB/9, 2.79 ERA, 2.82 FIP

The kicker here is that Santana was 16-9 that year, and Gray was - I can hardly believe this - 8-8 this season.

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The Twins beat the Athletics 6-4 on Wednesday night, with Oakland convincingly playing the role of the Washington Generals. Consider that Oakland led this game 4-2, having managed to touch up Pablo López for three runs, the last two of which were inherited by Caleb Thielbar, who let them both score plus one of his own for good measure.

Consider that the Twins tied the game based on a single from Max Kepler, who was once the subject of dastardly plots from the entire state of Minnesota, and a home run from Ryan Jeffers, who was stuck for much of the season behind a catcher who had an OPS that could be confused for a slugging percentage.

Consider that at one point, Dallas Keuchel replaced Jhoan Duran on the mound, an event that usually would signal something outlandish happening, like a four-hour rain delay, or possibly a zombie uprising. And then add that Keuchel got the win, because Trevor Larnach hit a pinch-hit RBI double in the eighth inning.

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The Twins beat Oakland on Tuesday, 11-3. It had an exhibition feel to it; Minnesota has little to play for except to tune up for the postseason, and the Athletics… absolutely would forfeit the series if they thought they could get away with it.

But there wasn’t nothing to see here, because you have to see Matt Wallner’s grand slam.

I have written this before, in the context of Wallner, but there was a time when the upper deck in right-center field in Minneapolis seemed more or less unreachable. When Target Field opened, something about the park - I remember a theory being “the concrete is still settling” - made it all but impossible to hit the ball out to right-center. Guys would pound the baseball, admire it from the plate, then have to start digging hard for second because the ball would barely reach the middle of the wall.

I don’t think this is so true any more… but at the same time, I don’t think anyone’s hit the ball as far as Wallner did on Tuesday night. Remember, it was a rainy evening in late September, and Wallner’s slam nearly hit the back wall - THE BACK WALL - in right-center field.

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I covered Saturday’s Minnesota United home game for the Pioneer Press. It was a 2-1 loss for the Loons against St. Louis, a come-from-ahead affair where Minnesota failed to convert some early chances, then gave up a pair of pretty good goals to the Fightin’ Toasted Raviolis.

Postgame, everyone that talked to the media - manager Adrian Heath, and midfielders Wil Trapp and Hassani Dotson - were at paints to stress: the Loons don’t feel like they’re playing that badly. They’re just not converting their chances.

“I thought the first half was one of our best performances of the season,” said Trapp. “But ultimately, and we said it at halftime, [we need] the cutting edge to score goals. The chances we had at the beginning of the game - the first 10, 15, 20 minutes - these have to be goals.”

Said Heath, “I have to take positives out of what we’re producing and what we’re doing. Are we getting opportunities? Yes we are. Are we creating opportunities? Yes we are. It’s not like we’re playing and not having a shot at goal.”

And, just to add to it, here’s Dotson: “Right now I feel we are outplaying teams, and just not getting the results that we need to get, or we deserve.”

These seem like excuses… but if you look at the underlying numbers, they’re not wrong.

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Please don’t make me talk about the football, or fútbol, games this weekend. We’ll attempt this later, maybe later today or tomorrow; I think we all need some processing time.

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Sets are a weird way to keep score, when you think about it. This is true of volleyball or tennis or really anything.

It’d be like if basketball games were decided based on who won the most quarters, not the total score.

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I’ve said all season that the Lynx are a three-person team; in the playoffs, that’s become a two-person team, with Napheesa Collier and Kayla McBride carrying them. Two could be enough, as Minnesota proved in their game 2 win, but in order to win Game 3, they’d need both to show up in a big way.

They only got one.

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There are lots of details yet to be filled in about the fledgling PWHL, the first women’s hockey league in years that will have all of the top players in the sport.

Minnesota’s team doesn’t have a name yet. They haven’t announced where they’ll play. You can’t buy tickets or a jersey. They don’t even start playing until January. But one thing is very clear already: this Minnesota team is going to be very, very Minnesotan.

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Every year, when the Wild make the playoffs, suddenly there seems to be a random injury generator that kicks into overdrive at Xcel Energy Center. Last year, it was Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Erikkson Ek and Ryan Hartman that all got random injuries. Usually, after the Wild’s annual first-round exit, we find out that six or seven players were playing with broken bones, or ruptured tendons, or legs that had been torn from the body and hastily reattached with bailing wire.

I don’t know what causes this in St. Paul, but whatever it is, it’s found its way to Minneapolis.

A day after Carlos Correa reaggravated the plantar fascitis that’s plagued him all year, Royce Lewis managed to hurt himself while running yet again, pulling his hamstring.

This being Royce Lewis, he played two more innings, and only left the game when he made things worse while trying to swing the bat. If the guy worked construction, he’d be the guy who accidentally nailed his hand to the side of a wall with a nail gun, and then also broke his own fingers trying to pry out the nails with a claw hammer.

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