MIKE STACKHOUSE’S 10 THOUGHTS

1 – CASH BLOWS ANOTHER – Tuesday night, Tampa was leading Boston 4-3 with one on and two outs in the fifth inning.  Starting pitcher Charlie Morton, who has 2.60-ERA and 163 strikeouts in 130 innings pitched, was removed from the game by goofy manager Kevin Cash (who is regarded as being one of the best in the game).  Reliever Adam Kolarek gave up a two run homer to Andrew Benintendi on the very first pitch. This is not even close to the first time Cash has messed up a game by removing a starting pitcher when there is no reason to do so.  I don’t know why he still has a job. I’m not a Tampa fan, but there have been a couple of games blown this year after Blake Snell was taken out too early and two others when Tyler Glasnow was lifted because his arm needed to be preserved (he’s currently injured with a bad wing).

2 – METS HAVE A CHANCE – In 2015 when the Toronto Blue Jays acquired David Price, they were 50-51 on the season.  The New York Mets were 50-55 when they picked up Marcus Stroman and yet nobody thinks they have a chance. They quite probably aren’t going to make the playoffs, but if you analyze the talent on this team, they aren’t as far off as many think.  A rotation of Jacob deGrom, Noah Syndergaard, Stroman, Zach Wheeler, and Steven Matz is as good as you will get anywhere in baseball. Edwin Diaz is a very good closer and they have some decent young hitters like Pete Alonso, Michael Conforto, Jeff McNeil, and Amed Rosario.  They aren’t expected to, but if they made another two moves for a third baseman and an outfielder, I would be very curious to see if they can hunt down the teams in front of them. They are six games out of a playoff spot at the time of this writing. Not an insurmountable deficit.

3 – PROSPECTS OVERRATED – If anything has been learned in professional sports over the last few years it’s that you can build a team with veteran players by making trades that cost you very little in the grand scheme of things.  The better prospect in that Stroman trade is, approximately, three years away from contributing. The Mets will draft and develop a different prospect just as fast as Simeon Woods Richardson will go through the Blue Jays minor league system.

4 – FURTHER ON PROSPECTS – Last year when talk of the New York Yankees dealing away prospects came up, the name Chance Adams was off limits.  Well, Adams is no longer considered a top young player and the flavour of the day now is a guy named Deivi Garcia. Nobody knew who Garcia was a year ago.  They could trade Garcia and there’d be a new stud prospect by this time next year. They are a dime a dozen.

5 – DEVILS REBUILD QUICK – Look at what the New Jersey Devils have done this offseason and they didn’t give up much of anything to improve their team.  They got a top draft pick in Jack Hughes, traded for a defenseman another team didn’t want anymore in PK Subban, took a low risk chance on free agent Wayne Simmonds, and took advantage of the Las Vegas salary cap crunch by adding young forward Nikita Gusev.  The Devils were an average team before these additions, so expect them to get into the playoffs and be a force unless something unforeseen occurs.

6 – JETS TURMOIL – There are a multitude of ‘off the record’ type stories on the Winnipeg Jets as far as chemistry issues amongst their players.  Mark Scheifele was forced to address it this week. I’ll be curious to see if there is any carry over as they did not look like a team that was pulling in the same direction last year.  We know Tyler Myers, Ben Chiarot, Brandon Tanev, and Jacob Trouba are gone; but I can tell you the players at the centre of some of the friction are still there and I don’t think they’ll be leaving any time soon.  

7 – CFL TEAMS ALL SUCK – I keep hearing the Winnipeg Blue Bombers and Saskatchewan Roughriders can’t be taken seriously yet because they haven’t beaten any good teams.  Haven’t the Bombers beat Edmonton once already? Who are these good teams anyway? There are only nine in total, so if you are of the opinion that the Riders, Bombers, RedBlacks, Argos, and Lions all suck; then what are we left with?  You can bet Saskatchewan will get no respect this week if they beat a Hamilton team without its starting quarterback, so the TiCats suck. Calgary? Are they good? Because Ottawa beat them. Montreal? Who’s left? Here’s a novel concept to consider – if the Riders and Bombers weren’t good, surely some of these other bad teams would have beat them, at least, once. 

8 – CFL POWER RANKINGS – Not a lot of thought put into this, but here’s my version of CFL Power Rankings – Edmonton, Winnipeg, Calgary, Saskatchewan, Hamilton, Montreal, Ottawa, and I’m not going to bother ranking the last two.  I’m also not feeling the least bit sorry for Corey Chamblin in Toronto. I felt he sabotaged the Riders and was begging to be fired in the final weeks of his tenure here. If not, he has no business running a football team.

9 – CARDS $$$ – This was my first year being involved with the Yorkton Cardinals as I served on their Board of Directors.  The Cards have been recognized for all the wrong reasons this season as they’ve won only a handful of games and they are in a massive financial hole.  I can tell you I knew well before the first pitch was thrown this team wasn’t going to be very good, but it does appear as though the finances are going to come through right around the break even mark.  That’s not too bad if the team didn’t already owe a ton of dough. I think a .500 team draws more fans as it was very difficult to entice people to come watch a club that was 2-and-30 at one point. I can’t speak for the other smaller Saskatchewan markets, but the two Alberta road trips cripple the bank account and makes it easy for the payments to fall behind.  I also think 56 games is too many for the fans and it’s too many for putting together a pitching staff where innings limits are of utmost importance. Is there some way you can find two more Saskatchewan teams and play 42 games over the course of two months and then meet Alberta for a World Series of sorts at the end? For Yorkton, the team would eventually thrive in that type of setup.  I have no idea if there is even such an appetite amongst the other 11 teams, but those are my initial thoughts after getting a chance to see how this team operated.

10 – NOT SPORTS – Maybe I’m the only one wondering this, but how do two 18-year-olds from Port Alberni, BC end up in northern Manitoba and are able to evade police and the military as they conduct an exhaustive search for these accused murderers?  My opinion is that they are either long gone from there and have moved on to somewhere else and haven’t been discovered by anyone, or they met their maker out in the bush and because of the wildlife and bugs, there is nothing left to find. 

(Mike Stackhouse is a freelance writer/broadcaster. Follow him on Twitter at @Stack1975)