Andy

Sometimes Hendricks looks awesome through 6 and it doesn't make sense not to keep him rolling. At no point today did he look like that guy, and he was giving up progressively harder contact as the game went along. Giving him 7-8-9 was understandable but he should've been right the hell out after that.

None this matters if the Cubs didnt have the absolute worst offense I've ever seen from a playoff team ever. true, but i can't think of one single reason not to start darvish in game one. seems like a dumb manager trying to be smart. reminds me of joe, actually. Joe started our best pitcher first in every playoff series he managed, including when Hendricks was the best and Lester was still pretty good in 17 and it was kind of a tough call to make.

St. Louis, playing the only team in the playoffs with half their rotation injured, puts up 3 runs in the first inning because of course they do. This is 2020. Of course the World Series is going to be St. Louis vs Houston.

LMAO ok so Schwarber's stays in and that piece of horsefeathers goes out, yeah, it's not meant to be this year

Why is ABC re-running every single big Cubs game since the start of 2018

Ugh, how the hell did Aguilar get to that ball.

while not great, they are way better than the ones doing the oakland game yesterday. Chipper sucks, but I'm a Sciambi fan. 1-for-2 is OK.

I've seen this brought up a fair bit, so just for completion's sake, Brady went 11-6 against Manning, and 2-3 in the playoffs. Brady did a horsefeathers ton more winning overall than Manning did, but when they went head-to-head it was a pretty close matchup.

Marlins OPS against LHP is 100 points higher (.776) than it is against RHP (.673) This is no time to reward your buddies or someone who used to be a postseason stud. I heart Jon like everyone else here but come on. I do at least feel somewhat confident that he will be on a short leash, and if he is yanked we have solid options to cover innings. But it might be too late by then. I feel for Ross on that decision just because he's kind of between a rock and a hard place. Tossing out Mills or Alzolay, who are probably the next best 2 options in some order, for their first postseason start in that circumstance (for Alzolay it would be his 7th MLB start) would be a tough ask

Yes, no rapid-fire result generators in the playoffs.

Allen looks pretty freaking great right now, although he got a pretty gift-wrapped PI call on what probably should've been the game-ending 4th-down incompletion at the end of yesterday's game. Being able to do what he did against Aaron Donald, Jalen Ramsey, etc. on that Rams defense is no joke. He's got the Chiefs on Thursday night in a few weeks and then New England and Seattle in consecutive weeks to start November, so it'll be interesting to see how he measures up there, but I think he might be here to stay.

Top 25 games ------------------------------ Virginia at (1) Clemson (8 pm, ACC Network) (13) Texas A&M at (2) Alabama (3:30 pm, CBS) South Carolina at (3) Florida (12 pm, ESPN) (7) Auburn at (4) Georgia (7:30 pm, ESPN) TCU at (9) Texas (12 pm, FOX) Tulsa at (11) UCF (7:30 pm, ESPN2) (12) North Carolina at Boston College (3:30 pm, ABC) South Florida at (15) Cincinnati (3:30 pm, ESPN+) Arkansas at (16) Mississippi State (7:30 pm, SEC Network - Alternate) (17) Oklahoma State at Kansas (3:30 pm, ESPN) (18) Oklahoma at Iowa State (7:30 pm, ABC) (20) LSU at Vanderbilt (7:30 pm, SEC Network) Missouri at (21) Tennessee (12 pm, SEC Network) Louisiana Tech at (22) BYU (9 pm Friday, ESPN2) NC State at (24) Pittsburgh (12 pm, ACC Network) (25) Memphis at SMU (3:30 pm, ESPN2) Other nationally available games --------------------------------------------------- Campbell at Wake Forest (7 pm Friday, ACC Network) Baylor at West Virginia (12 pm, ABC) Arkansas State at Coastal Carolina (12 pm, ESPN2) East Carolina at Georgia State (12 pm, ESPNU) UTSA at UAB (12:30 pm, FSN) North Alabama at Liberty (1 pm, ESPN3) Abilene Christian at Army (1:30 pm, CBSSN) Texas Tech at Kansas State (3:30 pm, FS1) Jacksonville State at Florida State (4 pm, FSN) Ole Miss at Kentucky (4 pm, SEC Network) Charlotte at Florida Atlantic (4 pm, ESPNU) Virginia Tech at Duke (4 pm, ACC Network) Western Kentucky at Middle Tennessee (5 pm, ESPN3) Navy at Air Force (6 pm, CBSSN) Southern Miss at North Texas (7:30 pm, FSN)

First weekend of B12 and SEC league games and man it's gotten weird in a hurry. I could hardly be more of a national fan. Don't really pay attention to the Pac-12 mostly because of kids bedtime reasons but I'm all in on everything else.

If these guys have collectively decided to stop sucking they picked a pretty great time to do it

Unless I'm missing something, this will leave the MAC as the only conference not officially returning to play.

Looks like it'll be a 7-game season. They'll follow the same format as the B1G where the #2 North team will play the #2 South team and so on the same weekend of the conference title game.

Home field in the first round matters a bit. I think most of us would probably agree it's more about not wanting STL to have any nice things, though. And to be clear, that's always an acceptable reason to root for something.

I feel like we're discussing how unlucky the Cubs' offense is every year in some form or fashion. I'm not saying you're wrong, the numbers suggest you aren't, but I feel like there's got to be a different explanation for this.

Well, we'll have to score twice - twice! - to win now. Fold up the tents.

I actually long for Chiliball at this point. It's that bad. Related, remember when we were sure he was the reason we couldn't score a damn run?

If it's going to take time, Manfred won't wait for it.

2 easy TD throws dropped on Sunday. Only reason Carolina was even in that game.

Now South Florida vs FAU is off too. Not announced, but it sure looks like ND had some guys who played in that game and tested positive 2 days later, forcing a USF quarantine. Tulsa vs Arkansas State was also postponed. Depressing.

Houston's game against North Texas has been canceled because UNT couldn't field a team due to 4 positives and contact tracing. Houston has now had 5 games postponed or canceled without playing one, and all 5 were because of the opponent.

I couldn't hate the idea of banning the shift more. If offenses continue to be as bad as they are this year, teams will have no choice but to tweak their strategies, and the issue should take care of itself. However, the utter nosedive across MLB leads me to believe the drop has more to do with the shutdown benefiting pitchers more than hitters, rather than some cliff we've gone over with respect to the shift.