It’s that time of year again, when the regular season comes to an end, the thoughts of no more playing baseball for another nine months start to set in and the Manchester Twilight League playoffs heat up.

It was a wild ride this summer for all teams. Rain delays messed with the schedule almost every week, but almost every game that was supposed to happen, did happen.

Six teams are guaranteed two more games and four teams are only promised one more before the first round tonight. Lets take a look at the match-ups…

Two games will be played at each venue Monday night, first at 6 p.m. at Northwest Park will be Elmers vs. CS&D Twins. The Twins (2-23) enter the playoffs as the 10th seed. The team based out of Trinity College in Hartford recorded just two wins on the year, the first was an 8-7 victory over #5 Willimantic Ridges and a 4-2 victory over #8 Loco Perro Expos. Elmers (10-13-1) started slow, but went on a 6(+?) game win streak in the middle of the season to get right back in the middle of the Central Division standings and collect the 7th seed. In two meetings this summer, Elmers swept the series by scores of 4-3 and 13-3.

The second game at Northwest Park of the evening will face the two newcomers to the league in 2013 off, as the #6 Portland Panthers (13-11-1) play the #3 Manchester Mayhem (16-7-3). Both teams proved to be very competitive over the summer posting winnings records. In their first game in a new league, Manchester defeated the defending league champions, Elmer’s, 2-1 and later in the week played East Hartford to a 0-0, nine inning tie, basically setting the tone for their season; they would be a tough team to beat. Portland played just as hard, losing to the defending champions by just one run on opening night. In two games played together, the teams split with the Panthers winning game one 6-1 and the Mayhem taking the second 2-1.

The other two games played tonight will be at Rotary Field in South Windsor. Game one is the #5 Willimantic Ridges vs. #4 Rivals Indians. Both teams come into tonight’s game with 10 lossses, but the Indians (14-10-1) played two more games than the Ridges (12-10-1) thus have the higher seed. In the first meeting between these two teams, Willimantic won 6-2 in Berlin and then in Willimantic on July 11, the Indians won 4-1. The Indians are last season’s runner-up.

The final match-up of the night, 8 p.m. at Rotary Field is #9 Bristol Knights vs. #8 Loco Perro Expos. These two teams switched spots a couple of times the last couple weeks. Heading into their game at Muzzy Field last Monday, the Expos held the eight seed. The Knights swept a double-header that night beating the Pirates and Expos to take a percentage point lead over the Expos and hold eighth place. After the Expos defeated the Twins on Tuesday and Panthers on Friday and the Knights lost to the Angels, the blue and yellow re-claimed the eighth seed and the home team dugout for tonight’s game. Last Monday the Knights defeated the Expos 8-1 and one month ago won 2-1 at East Hampton High School.

The two teams not playing tonight are the Glastonbury Pirates and the East Hartford Angels. These teams earned a bye through the first round in this new playoff format with 10 teams. Glastonbury will play the winner of Indians vs. Ridges and East Hartford will play the winner of Portland vs. Manchester, both games on Wednesday.

The loser’s bracket winners games will be played Tuesday and the loser of the first games will go home.