Marcus Thames is back with the club and feeling better, though there’s a little less of him after being unable to hold down so much as a protein shake the last couple days while battling the flu. He’ll get a day to regain strength. The lineup is the same as Friday.

As for Sunday, it appears Bonderman will make the start whether or not the Tigers clinch Saturday night. Realistically, it would be awfully tough to put together back-to-back bullpen starts — or three starts, when you consider the short nature of Ledezma’s outings. Bonderman said he won’t change his approach any whether or not the Tigers clinch. If they have the division wrapped up, it becomes a tuneup for the postseason. Plus, Bonderman isn’t usually one to shrug off outings in any situation.

Zach Miner will start Saturday’s game, followed by a series of relievers. Bonderman is still on track for Sunday.

Jim Leyland said this afternoon his playoff roster is basically down to one remaining decision. He told Mike Maroth he won’t be on it, at least for the opening round, though Maroth will still travel with the team. Chris Shelton most likely will be on it.

Ordonez left the game with lower back spasms, but Leyland didn’t think it’s going to be a serious issue down the stretch. He might be out Wednesday, but not certain. Alexis Gomez took his place because Marcus Thames was out with a bad case of the flu bug. Again, not sure whether Thames will be available Wednesday, but it shouldn’t be a long term concern. They’re not the kind of issues you want your team having in the final week of a pennant drive, but it’s better than pushing Ordonez out there and having him aggravate it worse.

What you saw Tuesday night was Leyland striking the balance between playing for the division title and playing to get his team ready for the playoffs. He hates the squeeze play and probably won’t use it in the playoffs, but he admitted he put it on with Polanco up for opposing teams’ scouts. He normally likes Sean Casey agaist lefties but pinch-hit Chris Shelton for him in the seventh and Omar Infante for Matt Stairs in a similar situation in the sixth. He’d normally go to Joel Zumaya with a lead in the seventh, but he instead started the inning with Andrew Miller, whom he says he wants to see this week to help decide whether Miller makes the postseason roster. The fact that Miller keeps walking left-handed hitters greatly hurts his case.

Yet when push came to shove, Leyland did what he had to for the win. He used Zumaya and Fernando Rodney in the same game, though he probably could’ve gotten away with Zumaya in the eighth if he had to. He’s leaving Jeremy Bonderman available for Sunday if there’s something on the line that day. He kept Carlos Guillen in the whole game instead of going to Ramon Santiago or Neifi Perez once Guillen had his last at-bat in the seventh. He’ll pick his spots to try some things and mess with people’s heads, but Leyland will try hard within reason to win these games.

For those wondering what the Tigers will do this weekend for its rotation, here it goes: Ledezma will pitch Friday, Saturday is TBA, and Bonderman may or may not pitch Sunday. Verlander will be skipped so he can get extra rest before the playoffs. Best guess is that Miner would be in line to pitch Saturday. Bonderman going Sunday depends on whether or not the division is still up for grabs that day.

Leyland also said he has his playoff rotation mapped out, but he doesn’t want to disclose it.

I have to admit, I had never covered a playoff celebration before. A large part of it had to do with the fact that until this year, I hadn’t been a beat writer on a winning team since I was still in college. I’ve covered two playoff series with MLB.com, but I was helping cover a Twins team that lost to the Yankees in back-to-back first-round series. Add it all up, and I’m having a hard time remembering the last time I’d seen champagne on a day other than New Year’s Eve. I had no idea how these celebration things worked.

That said, watching the Tigers Sunday made it clear I wasn’t the only one who hadn’t seen one of these before. A lot of players looked like they really weren’t sure what to do, which really gives you an appreciation for how young this team is and how long this club has gone without winning. Fortunately for them, Ivan Rodriguez, Carlos Guillen and Magglio Ordonez clearly know how these things work.

The scene that keeps playing in my mind is Leyland and his coaching staff standing outside the dugout and watching the players celebrate on the field for a while. You could tell he was soaking it in, but not until talking with him later did we know that he was crying during that time. He’s been close to tears on a few occasions this season, but he’s usually cut off his interview at that point, presumably so no one would see him crying. He couldn’t hold it back very well Sunday, and it would be hard to blame him. He didn’t expect this team to be this good, this quickly, and on days like this or when Kenny Rogers won his 200th, you really see how it hits him.

I think this team kind of hits some of the players the same way, but not in a crying fashion. Brandon Inge admitted Saturday that he had been so focused on the division race that he hadn’t stopped to think about what it means simply making the playoffs. By Sunday, he was like a 12-year-old kid. Judging from afar, he seemed to have as much or more fun with this than anyone who was on that 2003 team. Of course, I’m not sure how many others among those players would be willing to speak to the media with a bottle of champagne being inserted upside-down down the back of his jersey.

One more thing: It didn’t make any of my stories, but Vance Wilson made a point of mentioning Alan Trammell and the old coaching staff among those in his thoughts after the game, that this was a three- or four-year process. It was good to hear Trammell remembered on a day like this. Deservedly or no, he’ll probably go down as the Doug Collins to Leyland’s Phil Jackson, but when you look around, he’s not forgotten on this team.

He had a good enough session this afternoon off live pitching that he told Leyland he’s ready to go. Thus, he’ll be back in the lineup Saturday, though Leyland said he’ll bat lower in the order. He’ll have Sunday off to pair up with the off day Monday and they’ll go from there.

If it’s a day that ends with a ‘y’, it seems, the White Sox are reacting to something said by somebody on some other team. This time, it was Ozzie Guillen reacting to Magglio Ordonez’s comments Monday that the White Sox would be jealous if Ordonez made the playoffs and the Sox were left out.

"Oh yeah, he made more money in less time than I did, and that’s the only reason I feel jealous of him — not because he’s in first place," Guillen said of Ordonez and his free agent contract signed prior to the 2005 season with the Tigers. "I’ve got a ring, too, and I went to four World Series.

"Good luck and I hope he makes it. I’d like to have his paycheck every once in a while, but besides that, no, God bless him, and I hope he enjoys it.

"Do we miss him? No," added Guillen, echoing a familiar straightforward analysis he has presented before. "We have a better right fielder than he does, a better player, too, a better guy. We’ve got better things here, and when he says that we feel jealous of him, we’ve got a lot of guys in here with a ring on his hand. He doesn’t have one yet."

Now, to be fair, Guillen wasn’t presented with Ordonez’s comments correctly when he reacted. He thought Ordonez was saying that the White Sox should be jealous now the way Ordonez and the Tigers are playing. It made more sense to him when another reporter went back and explained the comments in the right context. And his comments about having a better right fielder are absolutely right; Jermaine Dye is a legitimate MVP candidate. Even so, it seems like this type of stuff makes news way too often.

When Ordonez said last year that Guillen was his enemy, it was a media spectacle. When Dmitri Young predicted (very poorly, in hindsight) last year that the AL Central would come down to the Tigers and Indians, it was a controversy in Chicago. When the Tigers said they thought Justin Verlander was tipping his pitches last month, the White Sox reacted, though they were joking about it this time around. When Craig Monroe and A.J. Pierzynski bumped into each other, it was a back-and-forth battle of quotes between the two. There was another flare-up in July when a couple White Sox players said Monroe admired a home run too much, too.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great from a media attention standpoint. It makes jobs like mine a lot easier when the White Sox come to town, and we feed the beast when we ask questions about it, write the reactions, then write the counter-reactions because they can’t help themselves. But at some point, it becomes overload, which admittedly is an amazing thing to me to say when we all made a big deal about a second baseman mistakenly declaring he’s out for the year.

Honest mistake on his part. He received a cortisone shot Saturday, felt the shoulder hurting as much Sunday as it did the day after he hurt it back in August, and thought it was a turn for the worse. In actuality, it was just the cortisone shot, which hurts for a day or two and feels a lot better after that. He feels good enough to try some BP today and holds out hope he can play in Kansas City this coming weekend. Keep in mind with Polanco that this is the first time he’s gone through a situation like this. He’s had injuries before, but nothing quite like this and nothing late in the year of a contending season. Hey, it happens.

Just got off the phone with Dave Dombrowski, who said Polanco remains on track to take batting practice as soon as Monday in Chicago and possibly return later on after that. He’s not sure whether Polanco was frustrated at questions or what happened, but he says Polanco has NOT been ruled out for the year and into next spring training.