Niagara Falls, NY – Happy Monday. With baseball heading towards its business end and football kicking off, there should be loads to talk about for once. I’ll talk football today, but I’m saving the Giants and Bills for someone else in the rotation. Today’s topics: NY Mets update, NY Jets, and a USA Eagles World Cup review.
New York Mets Update
The Mets went 3-3 this week. They took two of three from the Tigers and lost two of three to the Reds. The Reds series hurt a bit, as they saw their lead for the last wild card spot shrink from 5.5 games to 4.5. A sign of their pitching woes: they actually used all three rookies this week—Nolan McLane, Jonah Tong, and they called Brandon Sproat. All the rookies had some very strong outings. I mean, don’t get their Hall of Fame busts ready yet, but they gave a much-needed shot in the arm, even if Sproat didn’t get the win.
This team can hang on because the hitting is hot, but it’s weird. They can drop 10 runs in one game and then the next night, with runners on second and third when a clutch hit is needed, it doesn’t happen. I don’t know what will happen with this bullpen. Unless they can start figuring it out and be lights-out, the sixth to ninth inning is always going to be dangerous. Maybe they do make it and move some of the starters into the bullpen to hold things down. We can only hope.
New York Jets
I had no expectations for the Jets, and yet I’m still disappointed. I went about my day seeing the scores, and somehow they went from almost winning to losing. Which is classic Jets. If there are hopes of building a great defense: you can’t be a “great defense,” when your offense scores 32 points, and still lose. At the same time, the offense made plays, except when they needed to most—key drops. In the end, there was a lot of promise, but in typical Jets fashion, they found a creative manner to lose the game.
New head coach Aaron Glenn said there are “no moral victories,” although the team played well. And yeah, that was basically it. Hopefully, they can do better in the remaining 16 games.
USA Eagles World Cup Review
Our very own Short Matt is going to be covering this and has been on the Rugby Wrap-Up and the Rugby Odds Podcast. But for those that didn’t know, a couple of weeks ago the Women’s Rugby World Cup started in England.
The USA were the first champions of the World Cup and have consistently made the knockout round, finishing third, the last time it happened, three years ago. This time, they didn’t make it out of pool play. However, the fact that they didn’t make it out, was not necessarily because of poor performance, but because the gap has closed in women’s rugby and a lot of other teams have leveled up. The scheduling also wasn’t friendly.
They faced the powerhouse England—the favorites to win it all—and took an incredible beating. Then, in an instant classic, they drew Australia in a game they needed to win. And then they blew out Samoa. But because the schedule had them facing England first and Samoa last while Australia was able to face Samoa first and score more points, which allowed Samoa to really play better against the Eagles and limit the point score by the USA. The Eagles went out on points difference.
It’s a shame because if they had been drawn in a different group or had a different schedule, they definitely would have made the knockout round. It’s a tough loss for a couple of the veterans in their third or fourth World Cup, but there was a lot of young promise and talent, too.
I’m just disappointed, as I guess we all are, because I thought this was a really good team that got a rough draw. If they had just made one kick against Australia, they probably would be going forward. But we regroup and we rebuild. I want to take a moment to congratulate all the ladies on their incredible effort.
Thanks for reading, and please share your thoughts in the comments!
Coming up tomorrow is Ben Whitney, whose tapes are only slightly less worthless than the Giants offense.
