The Buscher

The second biggest loser today is Bryce Harper.

Playoff Kershaw strikes again. Dude should have his October failures engraved in his HOF plaque summary at this point.

Brian McCann retired immediately after the game

Imagine pitching Mike Foltynewicz twice in a five game series instead of Mike Soroka.

Matt Riddle and Mia Yim are in. Color me shocked that they didn’t make Riddle DLC.

Irrational mark out for a player from my alma mater.

So there's a chance that the Giants will be without Barkley, Wayne Gallman, Sterling Shepard, AND Evan Engram tomorrow in New England. Good lord. I knew it'd be ugly but now it has all the makings of a four-score blowout. I'm almost at the point where they should just consider this a glorified preseason game/bye week and put Eli in to get sacrificed.

It's not really surprising. It's six years into 2k taking over and barely anything has changed. They've been using the Yukes engine this entire time and they fell into the same mindset EA do with their yearly sports releases - there's no real incentive to change much if people keep buying the game every year. Although this game is technically the first one fully under Visual Concepts, the split with Yukes wasn't announced until August and they're still supporting with the engine for this game. I'd love to think that Visual Concepts are now working on a new engine for 2k21 out of necessity and it will actually look and feel like a brand new game next year. But even with Yukes gone I can see them just trying to recycle the same game as long as possible.

In one game anything can happen, especially when a team is playing with house money like the Rays are. Everybody had a Yankees/Astros ALCS penciled in for months. Houston really didn't need to panic and pitch Verlander on short rest. They could've had him and Cole both completely fresh and ready to go for a possible Game 5 if they totally needed it. Now they have to hope Cole doesn't have a rare off night like Verlander did or they're looking at a choke job for the ages.

Wow, the Astros might actually blow this series.

I mean I just figured every team was gonna draft a QB first anyway so may as well let them pick their own. Then again maybe the teams all ranked their top 8 QBs or whatever and the league will find a way to divvy it up.

Wait...so the league is assigning everyone’s starting quarterback?

Most MLB owners have money coming out the ass. They need to stop being cheap and re-invest into the team.

That series was the biggest formality in recent postseason history. 41 of the Twins’ 101 wins came against the Tigers, Royals, and White Sox. I know you can only play who is in front of you but they had a losing record against teams over .500. They stood no realistic chance against the Yankees. None.

Baker Mayfield: 8 completions, 13.4 QBR.

Keith Lee, Rhea Ripley, and Mark Andrews are in

Trent Seven is in

Sounds like Washington had already decided to fire Gruden after the Giants game but they didn't see any value in sacrificing his replacement to the Pats.

I feel like Dan Quinn can't be too far behind him.

Congratulations Patriots on winning homefield advantage through the AFC playoffs.

Most likely the ratings bring down year over year for Thursdays. Granted the ratings for Thursday games is still higher than anything else on TV that night, but they could clearly see nobody wanted to watch two awful teams. That said, there will still be some stinkers as I believe the rule about every team getting at least one Thursday game is still in place.

This is a rare year I’d be fine with the Yankees winning it all. For starters, no way do I want to see division rivals (Braves and Nats) win it. But beyond that, they’ve had to overcome a ridiculous amount of injuries and it’s not like these are the 2000s “buy everyone” Yankees.

Daniel Jones’ statline doesn’t look pretty today. But he was facing a great defense, had no running game which meant the Vikings could send extra rushers every play, and the receivers dropped a ton of passes. His only real bad mistake was overthrowing an open Sterling Shepard in the end zone. This season is just about letting him learn. And with an unwinnable game on short rest against the Pats coming on Thursday he’ll need to learn that sometimes you just need to take your lumps and move on.

Steelers win the OT coin toss and elect to kick. There’s something you don’t see every day.