Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig expects the playoffs to expand from eight teams to 10 for the 2012 season.

"I would say we're moving to expanding the playoffs, but there's a myriad of details to work out," Selig said Thursday at his annual meeting with the Associated Press Sports Editors. "Ten is a fair number."

Commissioner Bud Selig has confirmed baseball is studying possibilities to expand the postseason field. Eight teams currently go, but there is strong consideration being given to increasing that number to 10, beginning as soon as 2011. The new games would provide programming for the MLB Network and allow fringe teams to remain competitive deeper into September.

Joe Posnanski examines the length of intra-divisional match-ups in the American League, in response to the Joe West/Yankees/Red Sox stuff earlier in the week.

He discovers - to none of our surprise - that the White Sox play the shortest games in the AL. When you have Mark Buehrle and no offense, games apparently move right along.

Per an announcement made Friday, White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, general manager Ken Williams and manager Ozzie Guillen will be featured in "The Club," an original reality series produced for MLB Network by MLB Productions that will air this summer. This follow-up to "The Pen," featuring the Phillies bullpen in 2009, will have unprecedented behind-the-scenes access to the White Sox front office.

The gearheads at Orange County Chopper were commissioned by Jamie Buehrle to build Mr. Perfect the perfect chopper. Link goes directly to the episode's full video on TLC's site.

Here is the Scott Merkin piece: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20091125&content_id=7720524&vkey=news_cws&fext=.jsp&c_id=cws&partnerId=rss_cws

Fireballing lefty Matt Thornton is the highest ranking non-closer in Baseball Prospectus' opposition-adjusted win-expectation-based relief pitcher statistic WXRL. If that doesn't move you, his traditional stats should: 2.44 ERA, 1.04 WHIP, 11.0 K/9, 4.2 K/BB. A former first-round draft pick and minor league starter, Thornton's wildness out of the Mariner pen led Seattle to trade him to the south side for Joe Borchard in March 2006, and he's been a Second City mainstay ever since. He had a breakout season at age 31 last year and has been even better this year, shaking the LOOGY role for proper setup work in early June. Since July 1, he's posted a 1.71 ERA, 0.86 WHIP and walked just four men in 21 innings for a staggering 6.5 K/BB.

The Nats have been conducting a GM search, which doesn't seem to bode well for Rizzo. But the club-owning Lerners are nothing if not unpredictable. The field has apparently been narrowed to Rizzo plus two well-respected assistant GMs, Boston's Jed Hoyer and Arizona's Jerry DiPoto. The White Sox's highly regarded Rick Hahn, a Chicago native content to be assist Williams, bowed out of the derby. There is some thought a permanent GM could be named by the end of the month.