Andy

Rizzo takes 2 straight pitches he could've mashed for strikes to K, then complains about the correctly called 2nd one. Yeah, we're off to a fine start.

Darvish looked solid that 1st inning. If we can get 3 runs (yes, I know), I'll feel pretty decent.

Once we're out Oakland is definitely my main rooting interest the rest of the way. Although given the apparent alternatives (again, I'll believe STL is out when San Diego takes the field in the NLDS and not before), I had little choice in the matter.

I'll believe St. Louis is dead when they've been tossed in the grave and not a minute before

Yes but hypothetically Saturday is Kyle's bullpen day if we need to give him 20 pitches. That would put our rotation in disarray and have someone like Mills or Quintana starting game 1, but most likely everyone is pitching once in a 5 game series with no off days anyways. If that's Kyle's bullpen day anyway then Ross would be stupid not to toss Kyle out there for 20 pitches and as I typed that I realized we may be doomed

Only one game postponed so far this week - South Alabama/Troy. App State/UL Lafayette, set for next Wednesday, has been postponed. Notre Dame appears to have its outbreak under control, as all but 4 of the players in COVID-19 protocols will be out of them by next week and they haven't had any new positive tests this week.

The Astros' offensive stars being worse en masse this year is the best thing that's happened to Yelich. No one seems to be outwardly suspicious of him.

Vegas is already baking in the early double-digit lead they expect the Falcons to blow in horrifying fashion in the 4th quarter.

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.