This Week on the Blog

The Yanks hired a pitching coach, the Giants lost again, the Rangers started winning again and the Knicks beat the Mavs. Let's take a look at what might be up this week.

Yankees: The other day, the Yanks hired Matt Blake to be there "progressive" new pitching coach.  Then last night, the Yanks hired Brett DeGagne, another young, forward thinking PC from Northern Iowa Community College for an unspecified pitching position in the organization.  They need new PC's for most of their minor league teams and it's unclear if he'll be one of those or fill a vacant or newly created post.

In other Yankees news, the GM Meetings start later this week, and the Yanks have either done some business at them or around them these past few years. They also have a bunch of decisions to make about the 40 man roster, and so, we might see a trade or two go down.

Giants: the Giants play the Jets tomorrow, and there can really be no winners. The winner could forfeit draft positon and the loser's fan base will further toxify the the internet.  It's going to be gross.  And both Shepard and Engram will be out again. Should be a big Saquon game, but it always does and yet we haven't seen one yet this year. When a team has two mobile athletes like Daniel Jones and Saquon Barkley, it would pay to really move them around.  The Giants don't.  Jones is always in the same pocket and Saquon too often runs rignt smack into the line. They have do better than that, or there's no use keeping the coaches. There are creative minds out there that would know what to do with DJ and Saquon and whatever else they can add with lots of cap room and high round picks coming up.

Rangers: Monday Night the Rangers came out like a house of fire  - Kakko scored from Fox - then they fell back on their skates and lost to the lowly Senators. It was discouraging and made the previous wins into distant memories.  Then they bounced back on Wednesday and Thursday by winning both ends of back to back games.  First, they took care of the rebuilding Redwings at the Garden, then travelled to Carolina and took care of the Hurricanes.  That was impressive. And the kids have really been coming on.

Today, it was learned that Marc Staal will be out for awhile following surgery to relieve an infection in his ankle.  It's unclear whether or not they'll use another call up and or just go with six and Smith.

Knicks: Last night, Frank Ntilikina sprung to life and keyed a victory over the Kristaps Porzingis and Luca Doncic led Mavs. The Knicks are now 2 and 7 and both wins have been keyed by huge games by Bobby Portis and Frank, respectively.  Portis didn't seem to elevate after his game, we'll see if Frank can. Meanwhile, Mitchell Robinson is now out with a concussion - and that's a little scary.

So there it is, Yanks getting busy, the Giants in a precarious position in another November, the Rangers perhaps improving and the Knicks still figuring things out,  Have a great one, peeps.