NIAGARA FALLS, NY – Happy Monday, It was a beautifully ugly week of rain and clouds. Although the weather is getting warm, that’s positive. Warm weather means the tail end of hockey and basketball season and the start of baseball season. That’s what I’m going to talk about today. We’re going to cover the Mets, the New York Knicks, and the New York Rangers and Buffalo.
NY Mets Week in Review
The Mets had an incredibly bad week. They won one game this week—a comeback extra-inning win led by Ronny Mauricio’s game-winning hit against the Diamondbacks. They followed that up with two games and about 17 innings of scoreless baseball, managing only a hit after the seventh inning of the second game against the Diamondbacks.
Then they took on the Braves, where they actually broke the streak and scored some runs, but the pitching that had been holding couldn’t hold in the first two games—even though in Game 2 they did try a small comeback. Yesterday was Game 3, and the Mets were swept 1-0. The offense couldn’t do anything, and despite a great pitching performance from Freddy Peralta, those of us who have been long-time Mets fans got flashbacks of Johan Santana and Jacob deGrom—all the offense could muster was a couple of hits but no runs.
Let’s see if they can break out of that slump this week. It was also a little weird seeing Jeff McNeil in an Oakland A’s uniform, but such is baseball. Such is the business of sports.
NY Knicks Update
The Knicks pretty much finished up their week with a loss to the Charlotte Hornets at home. It’s the last week of the conference, and it looks like the Knicks are locked into the three seed. Apparently, it was “random appreciation night”—so we appreciate the fans so much that we rest all our starters? One minute of action just to keep his consecutive game streak going.
The most disappointing thing about the Knicks being the three seed is that Boston didn’t have the second star of its two-headed dragon, Jayson Tatum, for three-quarters of the season, and the Knicks still weren’t able to move in and take that number one seed. Boston somehow is the second seed, which is an incredible job done by their head coach. The Knicks have had injuries too, but I mean, Detroit—I won’t say they came out of nowhere—went from a low playoff seed last year to number one in the conference. It seems like the Knicks didn’t have an answer for Detroit and were going to be the two seed, but then they had a few bad losses and couldn’t seem to right the ship at times this season, ending up in the three seed.
The only good thing about the three seed is that it still keeps them out of Detroit’s bracket until the conference finals. But now they have to likely go through Boston in the second round, which they might not be able to do now that Boston’s fully healthy.
Rangers/Sabres Update
The one team I support and the one team I keep an eye on in the NHL are headed toward very different season endings. They actually played each other during the week, with the Sabres winning 5-3. The Rangers also lost their next game, so it seems that barring a miracle, the Rangers are going to finish dead last in the East.
The Sabres, on the other hand, are only three points out of snagging the number one seed overall, but they seem to have locked up the Atlantic Division. Only the Hurricanes, who lead the Metropolitan Division and the East overall by three points, are their challenge. So we’ll see what happens in the final week.
Thanks for coming. Stay tuned tomorrow for The Big Aristotle
