Three-Dot Friday 9.29

Playoffs, Promises, Parcells, Taylor, and Dame

Hopefully next season SF Giants games will be slightly busier (photo by author)

Look, I know it’s football season and all that, but there are no less than five MLB Playoff Spots to be determined in the final three days of the regular season. Just in case you haven’t heard it yet, there will be no tiebreaker games played, aka the famous “Game 163.” Any ties in the standings will be solved all based on head-to-head and divisional record and other things that other sports have used for, uh, decades…

You may say you hate the expanded playoffs- three division winners and three wild-cards per league- but the fact is that if everyone had the exact same record and this were the pennant-winner-only days then we’d know that it’d be Atlanta and Baltimore in the World Series and nothing else would matter. If it was two-divisions-per-league days then the NL West Champion Braves would have eliminated the Dodgers and Astros (remember when they were in the NL?) weeks ago and they’d be playing the Phillies in the NLCS. The AL would be the Orioles and Rangers in the ALCS. And let’s face it, that would be awful…

As for the non-playoff-contending San Francisco Giants, GM Farhan Zaidi promised "big changes” this off-season and people are wondering if that means firing manager Gabe Kapler. But you can’t tell me simultaneously that the roster is terrible and that Kapler did a terrible job. They competed for a playoff spot until the final week despite having nothing resembling a good offense and being an absolute disaster on the road for the final two months. Doesn’t Kapler get some credit for navigating the “which hamstring is going to flare up today” game because Zaidi seems to insist on getting players who are coming off bad seasons or injuries? As NFL head coach Bill Parcells says about roster construction, “If they’re gonna make you cook the dinner, they at least better let you shop for some of the groceries…”

A WORD ON TAYLOR SWIFT AT A FOOTBALL GAME: Isn’t the goal of the NFL to get more people to watch and talk about the NFL? Well, that happened. Complaining about people watching football who don’t know anything about football is dumb. At one point you didn’t know anything and you had to learn. The NFL doesn’t care why people watch as long as they do. The “Swifties” are watching football because their idol is. Imagine if she used this for good? As environmental group “The Cool Down” posted on Instagram, “Taylor, American yearns for you to ride public transit…”

A lot of people are looking forward, if you can call it that, to the Broncos and Bears this weekend. Both NFL teams are 0-3, look pretty incapable of winning and people are excited to see how they both screw up this week. I am not as excited because this was all so predictable. I was in the “Russell Wilson is cooked” camp at the beginning of last season. The Seahawks are pretty good evaluators of talent- remember, Wilson’s rookie season they had just signed ex-Packers QB Matt Flynn to a huge deal and and decided to start Russ over him from Week One- and were more than willing to get rid of him and go with noted journeyman Geno Smith, who merely led the Hawks to the playoffs while Denver face-planted. Meanwhile, the Bears haven’t won a game since last October…

There is another 0-3 matchup Sunday, and it’s the Vikings and Panthers. That’s more interesting to me because the Vikings were 13-4 last season, and the Panthers are starting rookie and number one pick Bryce Young after he missed last week. If Carolina can even hang, much less win, then it’s chaos in Minnesota no matter what…

With all that, it seems like the NFC North belongs to the Lions and Marin native Jared Goff. They rolled the rebuilding Packers last night to move to 3-1, and Green Bay is the only other team in the division with a win. I’m still not totally sold on Detroit but hey, the rest of their division is 2-8 combined and they still have five divisional games to play, so that’s pretty much a wrap…

My Substack colleague Marc Stein (technically true!) predicted on Monday the Damian Lillard trade had to happen this week. (Good thing he didn’t hold that for later in the week!) Wednesday’s trade to the Milwaukee Bucks is merely another crest in an increasingly frustrating Portland Trailblazers fan’s journey. I thought last season was even worse than the “Jailblazers” era of ‘02-’07 because at least the execs and players on those teams were trying, mostly. The decisions were terrible and results were worse, but they seemed to be making some kind of effort. While this past Blazers squad was like going to a restaurant and realizing this place is about to close. You walk in and go, “Oh no, do we really want to be here?” It was totally unsustainable in that form. It certainly does not help that current owner Jody Allen does not appear to care about the team even one-percent the amount her late husband Paul did. By all accounts she wants it for a tax write-off and little else. That’s why Nike creator Phil Knight keeps publicly offering to buy them and keep them thriving in Portland. But like Warriors owner Joe Lacob keeps saying about his public efforts to buy the Oakland A’s and keep them from moving to Vegas, “You can’t buy something that’s not for sale.” And so until Jody decides they’re not worth it (and she won’t until the new NBA mega-billion teevee deal is signed, which may not happen until next summer), this team will suffer…

KANSAS FOOTBALL NOTE: Ranked #24 and 4-0! And at #4 Texas on Saturday. Competitive? Sure. QB Jalon Daniels doing something ridiculously cool? Absolutely. Feeling good about winning? Not so much…