#-1: Gopher baseball (Last Week: -6). I just saw that I made a mistake in last Week's survey; I had two #-5's, the Jynx and the Goofer baseballers. I corrected it so that the U. of M. Nine had the #-6 I intended to give them.
Anyway, they get the #-1 spot this Week, and honestly, it was pretty cut and dried. This ballclub is the only Twin Cities sports team to finish above .500 for the screening Week. They did that by taking the series at home against Nebraska via winning Saturday and Sunday. And oh, sure, they dropped the series opener at Indiana yesterday/Friday evening by coughing up six Runs in the Eighth Inning and blowing a 6-2 lead. (Jack Liffrig was shaken down for four Runs and took the Loss, but Josh Culliver did Liffrig no favors because Culliver allowed the two players he faced to reach base.) But in a pretty awful Week for the Twin Cities, these guys are the only ones who acquitted themselves with even a touch of grace.
In case you were wondering: The Big Ten has a baseball tournament. It is double elimination. And it hosts eight teams. As of now, the U. is dead last in the B1G.
After finishing up in Bloomington, they come home to close out the regular season. On Tuesday the U. faces Nebraska-Omaha, and finally Northwestern comes through for a three-Game, Thursday-to-Saturday series.
Sweep at home by Houston aside, all phases of the team are trending in the right direction. I've been particularly harsh on the Bullpen, but I've seen stats where they've been rock-solid for a while now, so I apologize. The Rotation continues to pay dividends. And the Lineup (again, Astros aside) is producing Runs. It helps a lot that Byron Buxton is not hurt (knock on wood).
Their nine-Game homestand ends this weekend vs. said Guardians. They strike out on the road: Three in Oakland starting Monday, then three in Kansas City beginning Friday.
#-3: United FC (Last Week: -4). I remember in the second season for the Loons in top-flight (this was at TCF Bank Stadium, home of the Gopher football team) that they gave up two Goals last in their Match with the Seattle Sounders to lose, 2-1. And while I understood this outfit needed more time to find itself and gel, it was the first time I seriously asked myself why do I shell out so much money to be a season ticketholder when all I would see is incompetent dreck like what I saw.
Saturday night was the second time I felt that way. They were up against FC Cincinnati, a side that were vastly improved from the shitshow they were the previous two seasons, but not a world beater. And MNUFC had chance after chance after chance to put the ball in net, but they couldn't finish, they couldn't fucking finish. As the tilt went on, FCC gained more possession of the ball, and finally, in the 93rd Minute, Brandon Vazquez capitalized on a Backline blunder and, to be honest, stole a 1-0 win at Allianz. Disgraceful.
For a while now there's been a subset of fans who want #heathout. I think this could be the Loss, if it starts a domino of defeats, that could lead to Adrian Heath being ousted as Manager. Ironically, however, if that were to be the case, it would have been for the wrong reasons. Because even if Heath made the decision to not play Robin Lod (I don't know if he's injured or not), those players had enough chances to score a goddamn Goal. And they didn't. This shitty performance is on them.
I am loathe to evaluate this XI in other competitions besides Major League Soccer, but the sport of soccer is different from all other sports in the sense that a team competes in more than one competition at the same time. I've come to the conclusion that a Loss in the U. S. Open Cup merits mention, and accountability, here in the WMNSS, but a Win doesn't. That's just how I roll.
With that being said ... I thought about going to Wednesday's USOC contest vs. the Colorado Rapids, but I decided against it because 1) I was still disgusted by what I saw Saturday, and 2) severe weather was being forecast that evening. Glad I was right; there were storms so hellacious that the Match was postponed until the following afternoon. So I would've gotten soaked, and then I wouldn't have been able to see the whole Game I paid for because I work during the day.
Well, MNUFC beat the Rapids, 2-1, on a golazo by Emmanuel Reynoso. Moreover, Minnesota United FC won while playing with ten men because Brett Kallman got a second Yellow Card. OK, they have my attention again. But tomorrow/Saturday afternoon they visit tormentor Seattle, and then the club have their first midweek league Match, at home against the Los Angeles Galaxy. Things could point back south in a hurry.
#-4: Lynx (Last Week: -5). OK, some weird shit is going on with this franchise, and none of it is good. Losses to Washington and Indiana have dropped the Jynx (man, haven't used that insult in a long time) to 0-3 for the second straight Year (last Year they actually began 0-4). In the loss to the previously-winless Fever on Tuesday, Head Coach Cheryl Reeve benched starters Angel McCoughtry and Aerial Powers.
The slaughter really happened Thursday. The team bought out McCoughtry's contract and waved four players, including Guard Odyssey Sims, who played heavy minutes for Reeve and the club last season, and Rennia Davis, last Year's First Round pick. I understand the cap maneuvering to assemble WNBA rosters is suffocating, but McCoughtry and Sims were two of the vets who were supposed to be key pieces to this team making another run in the playoffs assisting Sylvia Fowles. Plus, they dumped their First Round pick from last Year -- was Davis that bad?
Guard play really tripped them up at the end of last season. With Sims gone, however, Reeve initially gave the keys to One Of Us Rachel Banham. I don't know if Reeve still has confidence in her, because versus the Fever Yvonne Turner wound up playing more Minutes than her, and on top of all that, Forward Jessica Shepard led the team in Assists. FiveThirtyEight believes the key statistic to follow for the Jynx is Assist Percentage, particularly how far from the high rate in 2021 will it fall.
And in case you haven't heard, Napheesa Collier is taking at least the first chunk of the season off because she's having a baby. You add this all up, and a part of me thinks Reeve made an abrupt change (she's also the General Manager) and went from going all in to stripping the team down to the studs in order to reload for a bumper crop of draftees next Year. It's going to be a hard fall, but longtime Jynx fans know how shitty this team was back in the day before rising out of the ashes. Nevertheless, this season could be a tough one to bear.
This screening Week they host defending champions The Chicago Sky travelling out to Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
#-Infinity: Wild (Last Week: 0). I am so both bummed and pissed at the Mild's bitching out to St. Louis in six Games that I'm not going to write about the Gopher softball squad, even though they likely had their season end in the First Round of the B1G Softball Tournament Wednesday. My feelings about the pro hockey team in town will crowd out what I should say about that other ballclub.
As for the Mild, I don't know where to begin. All I have are bullet points that prove this franchise's impotence:
- First off, the Mild continue to say that they were a great team 5-on-5. Sure, I'll buy that. But that means that can't give up penalties, because their Penalty Kill was fucking shit all season. But they were familiar with the Penalty Box plenty enough that St. Louis scored eight Goals off of them while on the Power Play. The Mild, meanwhile, didn't a whole hell of a lot when they had the man advantage, and they went 4-for-24 when they were on the Power Play. Superiority while at Even Strength seemed like a great plus, but they weren't on it often enough.
- Kevin Fiala, regular season hero, turned playoff zero -- as in no Goals. People were staying up nights figuring out how to extend his contract in Minnesota. Now, those same people are figuring what they can get for his rights. Fickle hypocrisy ... but right now, I understand.
- Ryan Hartman, who came out of nowhere to score 34 Goals during the regular season, didn't deposit even one. And St. Louis allowed him to skate the puck into the Offensive Zone because they knew he didn't have the skill or the creativity to get that puck to his linemates, Kirill Kaprizov and Mats Zuccarello.
- This series went six Games, but surprisingly, none of them were close. Just look at the margins of victory. In order, they were: four, four, four, three, three, and four. That meant we had false hope with their only Wins of the series, in Games 2 and 3. In Game 4 the Blues lost players, especially Defenseman, left and right, but they dropped that Game and, oh yeah, the next two. The Mild end their season on a three-Game losing streak where they were outscored 15-5. Some offense.
- I need to dole out some accountability to the coaching. Game 4 may have been the pivot point in this series, but Blues Head Coach Craig Berube juggled his lines to counteract our GREEF (Jordan Greenway/Joel Eriksson Ek/Kevin Fiala) Line, and it worked. And Mild HC Dean Evason didn't adjust in turn. Not until Game 6, when he finally put in Cam Talbot for a shaky Marc-Andre Fleury. You really don't want to put in a Goalie for the first time in a series in an elimination Game, for fuck's sake.
- Oh, and finally: This is their seventh one-and-done in the past Decade. And they haven't won a series in the Stanley Cup Playoffs since 2015.
And it didn't mean a fucking thing. I didn't watch any Second of this crap because I knew what was going to happen. But it seemed as though from the middle of Game 4 on, the Mild quit. They just gave up, played stupid, didn't care. And it was particularly shocking to skim through Michael Russo's Game 6 obituary on the squad and see how many goddamn mistakes they kept making. These guys won 53 Games and racked up 113 Points, and they decided to play like the fuckin' Charlestown Chiefs when it mattered the most?!
Fuck this team, because these guys, and this organization, is now and truly fucked. I said it going into this season: The move by General Manager Billy Guerin to buy out the bloated, perpetuating contracts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter -- and then to somehow delay the really big cap hits by a Year -- meant that the Mild had only one season, this season, to do anything substantial. Next Year, he is going to need to find 25 players who will fit under a cap situation that is $12.7 million less than that of other teams, or between 15-6% of their cap space. In each of the two Years after that, he'll need to find 25 who'll play while having $14.7 million (18%) less than other teams. (Aside: You may believe the organization needed the twin PR jolt of signing two superstars. But the consequences of those signings are happening right now. These signings were okayed by Owner Craig Leipold, and he needs to get more blame than he's getting now.)
That means the team will be jettisoning players they want to keep. Now, the team will be jettisoning players they can't wait to get rid of. Fiala? Hartman? Matt Dumba? Flower? Cam Talbot, who I had no fucking idea was pissed off he got passed over for goaltending duties the first five Games of the series even though he went 13-3 in his last 16 starts in the regular season? What felt like tough choices when times are good now feels like an opportunity to blow the whole goddamn thing up.
And why not? The Minnesota Wild will be shit the next three Years. The back half of their gameday rosters will be playing on the minimum. And now the next thing they'll have to worry about is pissing of Kaprizov, the only guy on the team who actually played well in the series. Do you think he wants to put up with three seasons of bullshit? Don't you think he'll want to get the hell out of Minnesota the first chance he gets?
I bought the hype. I know how Minnesota sports goes, and yet I was hoping that these guys were the one. Nope. I forgot this is the Minnesota Wild.
#MinnesotaIsLoservilleUSA
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