Crying About Kaepernick, Giant moves, Yankee Hopes

WASHINGTON, DC – While everyone was getting all worked up about some backup quarterback not standing for the National Anthem, news broke that the Pentagon can’t account for $6.5 trillion dollars. Trillion. That is not a typo. Those numbers are too big for my calculator (and brain), but I believe that works out to over twenty thousand dollars for every man, woman, and child in the United States. The Pentagon says they misplaced a decimal. A Slight Accounting Error. By a lot. But don’t worry about that, I’m sure they’ll sort it out; let’s keep talking about Kaepernick.

US soccer player Megan Rapinoe also bent the knee
US soccer player Megan Rapinoe also bent the knee

G-Men
The Giants 53-man roster was released and there were a few surprises. The team finally admitted what everyone else already knew, Andre Williams is not that good. They also decided to keep two impressive young wideouts in Roger Lewis and Tavares King. King has shined in preseason games and Lewis has been all the rage in practice. It is worrisome that they felt the need to bring back Will Beatty to try to fortify a pretty leaky OL. I know they’re probably scouring the wire, but they don’t currently have a FB or TE on the roster that is any good at blocking. FB Will Johnson was brought in to be that guy, but he was placed on IR and is done for the year. If they struggle, I would expect them to bring in a FB or a blocking TE at the expense of maybe a RB or LB, where they kept a lot of guys.

Will Johnson on IR means no lead blocking for the Giants' crappy run game
Will Johnson on IR means no lead blocking for the Giants’ crappy run game

Yankees’ Chances
I just got back from Monday’s Yankee game and I just can’t quit yet. My head is convinced they don’t have the firepower, but my heart won’t listen.

Lloyd
Last year, the Yankees got the second wildcard with 87 wins. It might take more this year, but let’s say 88 gets it done. At 71-65, 3 and a half back with 26 to go, they would need to go 17-9 the rest of the way. They do play 15 of the last 26 games in the Bronx.

Chance-in-a-million
The Yankees are in fourth place in their own division, and now have Detroit and Houston in between them and the second wildcard team, Baltimore. Apart from 7 games against the Rays, the schedule is pretty tough, with 6 more against the Jays, 7 against the Red Sox, and 3 against the Orioles and Dodgers. The injury monster ravaging the Mets seems to have hopped over from Queens as McCann, Tex, Gregarious and others are banged up and have missed games. Aaron Hicks was put on the DL just as International League MVP, outfielder Ben Gamel, was traded to Seattle. Bad timing there. Promising BBB pitcher Chad Green may now be shut down for the season with elbow troubles. It’s hard to imagine the Yankees making a serious push while trotting out Michael Pinieda every 5th day and giving meaningful 7th inning outs to a bunch of September call ups. The 7th inning today was covered by household names Jonathan Holder, Ben Heller, and Tommy Layne. The largest of the BBB hitters, Aaron Judge, struck out 3 times on Monday.

You might want to get used to watching Aaron Judge walking back to the dugout after swinging at a curve in the dirt
You might want to get used to watching Aaron Judge walking back to the dugout after swinging at a breaking pitch in the dirt

He hits the ball pretty damn far every now and then, but man, he looks easy to strike out. He has less discipline at the plate than my dog Chief would have in a tennis ball factory. Or Bill Belichick in a room full of the other team’s playbooks. Or Bartolo Colon at a buffet. Should I go on? No?

bartolocolon-fluffy

Anyway, the Yanks have some holes, but I can’t look away.

That’s it for me. Tomorrow Angry Ward continues his quest to make Trump look calm and measured.

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About Ben Whitney 436 Articles
Ben Whitney comes from journalistic stock. Aside from his brothers, rumor has that his great-great grandfather was the youngest brother of Eli Whitney and covered the earliest "rounders" games. Big Ben is also another New York Rugby Club player/pal of Different Matt, Short Matt and Junoir Blaber. He likes film noir discussions, has twin girls and took up ice hockey after retiring from rugby.