This Week on the Blog

Alright.  Weird week ending.  Rangers didn't have a game, the Giants had insult added to their injuries, the Knicks won and lost, and the Yanks waited for their next prey to present itself. This could be a much better week.  Let's take a look.

Yankees: The Yankees keep adding parts back.  At the end of the regular season it was Sevy and Stanton, and today it is Aaron Hicks.  Hicks isn't a superstar, but he is a grinder who can take over a game both with his offense and defense.  The Yanks will start playing Houston later, and it sure seems that guys like Judge, Sanchez and Severino are still raw over the 2917 ALCS.  We'll see if they can turn that into positive performance.  The Yanks are finally pretty healthy, so any comparisons in rate stats between the Yanks and Astros are moot. Many of the Yankees missed big chunks.  What's more the undermanned Yanks still beat the Rays by 7 games over 162,  and they just pushed the Astros to a game 5 in the division series  Let's hope the guys who've arrived since the 2017 series, like, Stanton, Torres, and LeMahieu show why they were acquired.

Giants: The Giants don't have the Yankees depth, so Thursday night when they went to New England without Saquon, Sterling, Engram and Connelly, and lost. The team played hard, but the refs were horrible, and some of the vets missed tackles or drew penalties that kept the defense on the field. Anyway, that's over, and they now have 10 days to get guys back and have a mini-camp,  They are 2 and 4 and can still have a season.

Rangers: the Rangers didn't play this week. The Wolfpack hasn't played since Sunday. So, they both had a chance for their own mini-camp, and it sounds like they both did.  Three things are starting to loom.  First, Georgiev was much better than Hank in the two games they did play. We said over the summer the best possible scenario was to keep Georgiev and Shesterkin.  We'll see how this plays out.  Second, the Rangers do not have a second Center, and that mean they don't have a second line.  Even thougb Kreider and Kakko are both very talented - they need someone to pass it to them or to receive their passes, and Strome isn't it. Third, Kakko hasn't scored yet, and thought it's only been two games, Buch hasn't scored yet, either.  Maybe a switch would help.  But that wouldn't do anything about the issue of having no second line. Are they waiting on Chytil?  And why hasn't Andersson gotten a chance?


UPDATE:  Kakko scored while I was writing.  From Strom and off his backhand.  Sweet one.  Game is tied 1-1 going into the third.

Knicks: The Knicks have now won one and lost one. Doesn't look like Knox played last night.  Neither did  Smith, and Iggy hasn't gotten a minute in either game.  Randle, Portis and Morris were effective, but Mitchell barely played and Payton was scoreless and -24.  Not good.  Barrett wasn't quite as good in game two, but he still had 15 points, 7 boards but just 1 asssist, while adding a block and a steal to his stat sheet. That's one great thing about him, he'll usually get multiple assists and check multiple boxes.  They play again Wednesday,

So there it is.  Big chance for the Yanks.  Important period for the Giants. The Rangers get to play again, and the Knicks may already have a big problem at the point if Smith can't play.  Go teams and go readers.