I am guilty, as well as many others, of thinking of the Astros as the same Godzilla offense as they were in 2017, whatever means they used to get there. I hear Astros and think whatever batter they’re sending to the plate sends thousands of Tokyo residents scurrying for cover. And the Astros offense is still quite good, and if Yordan Alvarez were ever to come up in a big spot against a team I genuinely cared about, I’d probably shit out my own tongue.

But what really makes the Astros special these days is that they have produced an oppressive pitching staff. And they seem to have done it with an ethos of figuring out whatever pitch that guy throws best, and telling him to go throw it a fucking ton. And against the Yankees, they’re throwing as many breaking pitches as they can. And they’re up 2-0, having given up just four runs in those two games, so it must be working.

In Game 1 Wednesday night, over half of Justin Verlander’s pitches were a slider or curve, up a slight tick from the 44 percent of his offerings in the regular season. The Yankees whiffed on eight of the 13 sliders he threw. Last night in Game 2, Framber Valdez threw only sinkers or curves for the most part. The Yankees swung at 24 of the 40 curves he threw, and whiffed on 16 of them. Brayan Abreu came in, and 15 of his 19 pitches were sliders. Ryan Pressly has thrown 37 pitches in the first two games and only two were fastballs. He’s gotten eight whiffs on the 19 pitches the Yanks have swung at from him.

It makes sense, as the Yankees tend to mash fastballs pretty hard. As a team, New York slashed .252/.357/.482 against fastballs. Against sliders and curves? Those numbers drop to .221/.282/.401. They can still get to you off the breaking stuff, but it’s the surest way to keep them in the park. And they’re not built to string hits together.

But this is kind of the Astros’ thing. Verlander had never thrown more than 20 percent sliders when he was in Detroit. He’s never thrown less than that in Houston. Gerrit Cole threw more curves in Houston by far than he had in Houston. Valdez throws his sinker which acts as a bowling ball that hitters beat into the ground. Lance McCullers can only throw curveballs or he has to write on the chalkboard after class. They’re not really worried about pitch mix. It’s not that different when the bullpen comes in, as Pressly, Cristian Javier, Abreu, and José Urquidy specialize in throwing breaking pitches over a third of the time. That’s dangerous water for the Yanks.

There likely won’t be much of a reprieve for the Yankees when they return to the Boogie Down tomorrow, as McCullers and his curve and slider are likely to be waiting in Game 3. Only Javier has heavy fastball ways, if he starts in Game 4, then the whole cycle will start all over again. McCullers already gave Yankees fans the willies in Game 7 in 2017 when they couldn’t solve his ways.

The Astros’ production line on the mound is unmatched, and why they’ve remained on top even through the “losses” of George Springer and Carlos Correa (it’s not really a loss when you simply let them walk out the door because they want real money). It’s why they’ve been able to surf the playoff 0-fer that Jose Altuve is currently on. It’s why they have a two-game lead when Alvarez has to have a big moment in this series like he did in the last one.

Could they be cheating on the mound, too? Let’s just say it before everyone else does, led by very bitter Yankees fans who are staring down the barrel of a third ALCS loss to them. 

You’ve lived long enough to hear the phrase “throw the records out when these two meet.” It’s usually the last ditch of some production team trying to gloss up a rivalry game that’s no longer much of a rivalry. No, I’m not thinking of Bears-Packers, you charlatan! But it’s meant to convey some time of matchup that’s supposed to transcend mere records or current form. That it’ll mean so much to the fans and players, that the worse team will rise to something they haven’t been previously to challenge a suddenly jittery favorite.

When it comes to LAFC facing LA Galaxy, best known as El Tráfico, it’s not only the records you have to throw out. It’s tactics, logic, sanity, and pretty much every strand of what you know about soccer. These two teams hurl themselves at each other headlong, and after about 15 or 20 minutes or so there isn’t an attack plan or careful build-up so much as a lacrosse game played by drunken monkeys. There are goals galore, always a fight or two, and drama out the ass.

Their first meeting in the MLS Playoffs was no different. Both of these teams have concentrated their budget almost entirely on their attack, which truly shows when they become so bloodthirsty to beat their crosstown rival that the word “defending” can only be pronounced in Charlie Brown’s teacher voice. Which means LAFC took the lead twice, and immediately handed it back twice, because holding a lead and calming things down is for nerds. All of it played before a cacophonous rabble.

Their hope was to score late enough that there wouldn’t be time for them to spit it back. Step up Chicho Arango:

One of MLS’s problems is that there are so few games with stakes. With 14 playoff teams, there just isn’t a ton of urgency to the regular season. Too many games pass as a kickabout on a summer day.

And one of the reasons I, and many others, couldn’t hook ourselves into the league for years is that there was no explosion of goals. Soccer is goals. Soccer is the release of goals. Our reaction to goals. For a long time, you’d turn on an MLS game and see a half-empty stadium and polite applause for a goal from some suburban dad with an ice cream bar spilling onto his golf shirt. It wasn’t the raw emotion and fervor we’ve watched elsewhere. It didn’t feel like what the sport is. It was play-acting.

But thanks to the construction of a host of soccer-specific stadiums that have the fans closer to the field, and more passionate fanbases around the league, and the noise those two things can combine to make, we get that explosion. We get that sea of humanity that seems to turn into one teeming blob after a goal. It looks and sounds how it’s supposed to. We just need more games that bring the passion and urgency to really let it off the leash.

Watch the beer sprout up like geysers all over The 3252 at a last-minute winner. Watch the arms flail. Hear the wall of sound. Soccer can sound and feel here like it does everywhere else in the world. MLS just needs to give it more reason to. 

Carolina Panthers’ do-it-all back Christian McCaffrey was sent packing Thursday nightt to the San Francisco 49ers for a second-, third- and fourth-round picks in 2023 and a fifth-round pick in 2024, first reported by ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

The Panthers all but announced McCaffrey’s departure by thanking him on Twitter.

It was reported last week that the Panthers, who have gotten off to a dreadful start to the 2022 season, were open to dealing their best player after firing their head coach Matt Rhule, and shipping disgruntled receiver Robbie Anderson to the Arizona Cardinals.

At 1-5, the Panthers have been brutal so far this year. After Sunday’s 24-10 loss to the Los Angeles Rams McCaffery said, “All I want to do is win.” With the deal, McCaffrey returns to the Bay Area, where he starred at Stanford, and joins a San Francisco 49ers team that is 3-3, yet tied atop the NFC West with the Rams and Seattle Seahawks.

Since being drafted by the Panthers with the 8th pick of the 2017 NFL Draft, McCaffrey has been one of the most productive backs in the NFL, both running the ball and as a pass catcher. In 2019, his third season, he rushed surpassed 1,000 yards rushing (1,035) and receiving (1,005), becoming only the third player in NFL history to do so. But injuries have hampered his career since, limiting him to just three games in 2020 and seven in 2021. So far this season, McCaffrey has played in all six Panthers games, and according to ESPN, has played in 85 percent of the team’s snaps.

McCaffrey’s arrival in San Fran helps settle a running game that moved receiver Deebo Samuel into the backfield and unites him with the coach who nearly drafted him in 2017 in Kyle Shanhan. The McCaffrey-Shanahan families have deep ties as Christian’s father Ed McCaffrey played receiver for Kyle’s dad Mike Shanahan with the Denver Broncos in the 1990s, winning Super Bowls in the 1997 and 1998 seasons.

This is a breaking story. Check back for updates.

The NFL owners meetings aren’t usually so entertaining.

Usually, you have more of a united front around a multi-billion dollar business and one of the last cultural unifiers in a fractured landscape, but this year you have Colts owner Jim Irsay saying there might be merit in ousting Washington owner Dan Snyder, and Dallas owner Jerry Jones reportedly telling newlywed and Patriots owner Bob Kraft, “Don’t fuck with me” over commissioner Roger Goodell’s executive pay package.

Goodell’s pay, ESPN reports, was $128 million for 2020 and 2021.

If you added Botox and a yacht, it could be the vacation episode of the Real Owners of the NFL. It’s one dramatically tossed glass of a vintage red away from a season finale.

First of all, do a quick search for “Irsay” and “condo” to see how extraordinary it must be to have him call out another owner for being bad for the league. The NFL is filled with owners whose closets are crowded with skeletons.

But aside from the tragicomedy, the reports from the owner meetings, and an incredible piece of reporting from ESPN’s Don Van Natta, Seth Wickersham and Tisha Thompson, there is a larger question facing the NFL at this moment.

Why would anyone cooperate with an NFL investigation?

“I think this is going to tell women affiliated with the NFL is, you can’t trust the league to handle anything appropriately, especially if Roger Goodell is in charge,” said Lisa Banks, an attorney representing some of the women in the investigation into workplace harassment at the Washington team.

Between the issues that Dan Snyder is accused of, and for an extensive rundown please refer to this piece from Stephen Knox, and the absolute inadequacy of reporting in the Deshaun Watson investigation, the NFL has gone from a post-Ray Rice commitment to personal discipline to being accused of having victim information from the Snyder investigation get back to Snyder, and the possibility that it was used to hire private investigators against them. Snyder has denied any wrongdoing.

Banks’ law firm released a letter on Tuesday threatening a lawsuit if that had been found to have taken place.

The letter said that “a number of Banks’ and (Debra) Katz’s clients faced harassment, retaliation, and public disparagement after participating in the Wilkinson investigation.”

NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy released a statement that denied that any information leaked:

“We have said repeatedly that we are committed to protecting the anonymity of all witnesses who participated in the Wilkinson investigation. The NFL did not share their names with the Commanders and their lawyers. The allegation is false. Ms. (Beth) Wilkinson and her firm kept their pledge to the witnesses and did not share their identities with the Commissioner or League staff other than the limited number of participants who were willing to be identified.”

The NFL released the statement, but, according to Banks, no one in the league offices has actually responded to Banks or her firm.

Banks said there were people at the NFL who she has dealt with in good faith, but that, in the Snyder case, they appeared to be overruled. Goodell said he wasn’t going to release the report on Snyder in order to protect Banks’ clients, but Banks and her clients have repeatedly demanded a public accounting. The person Goodell is really protecting with this is, of course, Snyder.

“If Dan Snyder is ultimately held accountable, it’ll be despite the NFL, not because of the NFL,” Banks said.

Ultimately, Goodell asked investigator Beth Wilkinson to not write a report, and to orally brief him on the findings. Hiding the findings may be a bad idea if the goal is institutional change, but if not, it saves the league from having to find a toilet to flush all the paper down.

If the NFL wanted to change, we’d have had a sign by now. It was all the way back in the Ray Rice era, after the 2014 revised personal conduct policy allowed for the league to investigate and apply penalties, even if there were no formal legal charges, that there was a question floating around the league offices: How could the league do internal investigations into these situations if the victims (and to be fair they were almost always women) wouldn’t talk to the NFL?

The league attempted to build trust by hiring capable people to do the investigations themselves.

But there isn’t a lot of money in actually holding employees accountable, and certainly not when it comes to owners. Over the most recent years, we’ve seen that the best of intentions from that era have been functionally abandoned in high-profile cases. Take Watson’s case, where Jenny Vrentas’ reporting in The New York Times found 66 massage therapists who were potentially visited by the then-Texans quarterback. The NFL meanwhile, interviewed only 12 of the 24 therapists who filed suits against Watson, and only detailed the findings of four.

Imagine being so overwhelmed by the number of massage therapists who may have been inappropriately touched, and worse, that you couldn’t possibly schedule them all for a visit?

The NFL is a business that doesn’t want to be a workplace.

“Corporate America has come much further since the advent of the Me Too era than many of the sports leagues,” Banks said.

Even so, she added, the NFL trailed even farther.

Listen, that $128 million isn’t free. Goodell works hard for that compensation package, and you’d think Jerry “Party Bus” Jones would see the value for Goodell’s service.

J.J. Redick is Exhibit A why you can’t trust most former athletes to tell you the truth.

For sure, they have insight into their games that trained sportswriters don’t have. They’ve been out there; reporters haven’t. There’s simply no argument.

Still, most of the time, you will always get a more honest take or opinion about what’s going on from a reporter or writer.

Many athletes are compromised, and have so many conflicts of interest that they can’t keep it real with the fans.

They have played with a player they are critiquing. They played for an organization in the past. Their agent represents a player that should be blasted. They went to the same college or belong to the same fraternity.

The list of reasons why they will sell the fans down the river is too long to list even on the internet.

Often, they will look into the TV camera and flat-out lie to you about what you witnessed seen with your own eyes.

It’s embarrassing.

On Wednesday on ESPN, Redick delivered the worst take in sports TV history after the NBA opened its season on Tuesday night.

Instead of breaking down what’s wrong with the Los Angeles Lakers after their loss to the reigning NBA champion Golden State Warriors, he chose to do a ridiculous public service announcement that was just plain dumb.

“We should treat (the Lakers) season as a celebration of LeBron’s individual greatness. … Spending all day, every day talking about their deficiencies, that’s not great.”

And with that, Redick should have quit his job on the spot and walked off the set.

In other words, Redick said he doesn’t want to do his job — analyze games. He’s supposed to tell fans at home what happened, and what can be done to correct things moving forward. It was mind-boggling. After one game, he wrote off the season. Did he even think about the rest of the Lakers and the Lakers fans?

What if L.A. wins its next five games? Comical.

There’s plenty of time to talk about James when he does pass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA’s all-time scorer. And there will be plenty of fanfare about the historic moment.

But to throw the towel in on the season after one loss is ludicrous.

In his take, we didn’t hear Redick say he would return all the Lakers’ season ticket money back to fans. His take is why there’s such a turnover among former athletes on TV. They eventually weed themselves out of the business because they can’t offer an honest take.

Charles Barkley is the ultimate exception to the rule. He’s as honest as they come and that’s why so many players dislike the former NBA star.

Barkley has no agenda. He’s not out to protect anyone. He watches what’s happening in The Association and puts it all out on the table.

Best of all, he takes on the biggest and best players. No one is spared. Last season, he called Lakers star Anthony Davis “street clothes” because he’s always injured.

Once, on TNT, after just a horrible half of basketball, Barkley told viewers that the NBA, his league, was “unwatchable.”

It was gold, honest. It was refreshing.

Most would never bash the product, be that honest. After all, they would be afraid that the league would come down on them and potentially remove them from their gig for being negative.

It happens all the time in sports. The analysts and announcers are all in bed with the teams and leagues. Most of the talk is muted, sugar-coated.

You almost never hear national announcers doing NFL games bash coaches for poor game plans or openly say that a player made a bad play or cost their team the game.

It’s not about ripping people just to rip people. It’s about an honest take on the game.

People just want an honest take. If peeps just wanted only the good, team websites would be popular with fans. But they aren’t because fans understand that most are just PR tools. You won’t read anything negative on those sites no matter how poorly a team plays.

Fans would rather read the truth about their teams — even if it’s brutal to hear.

When you hear guys like Draymond Green talk about the new media, it’s code for athletes covering themselves. Basically, it’s athletes covering for each other.

The traditional media would have been out of business a long time ago if fans only respected the opinions of people who played the game.

Fans are smarter than that. Otherwise, they would have thrown in the towel on Redick’s career after he averaged six points during his rookie season in Orlando.

The NBA world finally got its first look at the Brooklyn Nets’ new big three, and most are already disgusted with the return they’ve yielded. It was only the first game of the season, but if lack of motivation (LOM) were a stock, this team would rise in a bullish market. Brooklyn came out on its opening night at home and lost 130-108 to the New Orleans Pelicans.

If you’re a betting person, don’t waste your time or money on this team. Based on the past two seasons, all the Nets will do is disappoint. But it’s astonishing that even with this knowledge, some prominent sports analysts and personalities insist on choosing Brooklyn to make a run to the NBA Finals. ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith is holding onto this fairytale (like many others) where the Nets face the Golden State Warriors for the championship.

Whatever kind of coffee Smith is drinking, he should probably cut that back by half the amount if he really believes the Nets are making it out of the Eastern Conference. Maybe SAS should take his own advice and “stay off the weeeeeed.” Smith needs to stay away from whatever continues to encourage him to pick the Nets.

Smith also believes anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist Kyrie Irving will be a leading candidate for league MVP this year. SAS made that comment on Tuesday morning’s edition of “First Take,” then Irving promptly went out Wednesday night and shot 6-for-19 (31 percent) and 0-for-6 from three-point range in a 15-point losing performance. Irving has never even received an MVP vote heading into his 12th season. Good luck with that prediction.

One bright spot for the team was the debut of Ben Simmons in a Nets uniform. When I say bright spot, I’m only referring to the fact that he suited up and played. Anything he did during his time on the floor is likely already forgotten by fans, and rightfully so. Simmons finished the game with more fouls than points, rebounds, and assists. Simmons ended the game with four points, five rebounds, five assists, and six fouls. Yes, Simmons fouled out of his first game back after playing just 23 minutes. Looks like Draymond Green has some competition for triple-singles king in The Association.

Kevin Durant did his usual thing on the court, shooting over 52 percent from the field, scoring 32 points, and grabbing three rebounds — and the Nets still lost by a lot. Let’s face it, this team does not have a leader. Durant isn’t a natural-born leader, Irving wants to lead, but no one in their right mind wants to follow, and Simmons….well, he’s just Ben. He’s just happy to be out of Philadelphia.

This team is going nowhere, and they’re in a hurry to get there. Forget the Finals. Let’s see them get out of the first round of the playoffs this year. Hell, win a playoff game. Milwaukee, Boston, Philly, and maybe even Chicago and Toronto are better teams than Brooklyn. You might even be able to throw Miami in that grouping again this season. Those teams may not have the overall “star power,” but we see where that’s taken the Nets thus far. 

• Warning: This story includes allegation of sexual coercion of a minor and may be disturbing

From the initial accusation against Tampa Bay Lightning’s Ian Cole for sexual misconduct and abuse until the conclusion of the NHL’s investigation, one week passed. There were seven full days from claims from Twitter user @emily_smith3333, a likely alias to protect her real name, that surfaced on Oct. 7 to the NHL’s statement finding “no evidence to substantiate the allegations” last Saturday. It took the NHL a little over one week to get to the bottom of the matter before his suspension was reversed. The only public outreach from the NHL on the matter was a tweet from the league’s official account, posted below, on Friday. The NHL’s statement on the investigation into Cole mentions multiple ways the league tried to contact the accuser.

Ms. Smith claims she was groomed by Cole for four years, starting when she was a minor. Smith claims that Cole was aware she was in high school when he pursued a relationship with her. She also alleges that Cole pressured her into sexual situations without her consent. There’s an additional accusation of Cole bragging about his relationship with Smith to teammates. Whether anyone from that scenario reported it to the league needed to be looked into as well, and we’re assuming all this was done thoroughly over seven full days? And that’s assuming the NHL didn’t have prior knowledge about allegations against Cole and never investigated them. The tweet not only accuses Cole of sexual misconduct with Ms. Smith (he denies the allegations), but she also claims the 13-year NHL veteran was involved with another minor as well.

The legitimacy of the investigation into Cole’s alleged behavior is questionable. Deadspin has made multiple attempts to get comment from both the NHL and the Lightning on the length of the Cole investigation with no response as of this posting. Even the most cut-and-dry cases should take the proper time to vet all information. This isn’t as simple as a speed camera and paying a small fine, whereas radars can check how fast anyone is driving. Multiple serious allegations were leveled against Cole. Unless the NHL is beyond a doubt sure all of Smith’s claims are grandiose bullshit, Cole shouldn’t be near the Lightning team facilities right now. And if the claims have tangible proof of zero factual evidence, where are any countermeasures? That’s what happened in Georgia Tech men’s basketball head coach Josh Paster’s case, per ESPN. Wishing the issue goes away by not drawing more attention to it would be a horrible strategy if Cole’s innocent, with a major emphasis on “if.”

Simple questions the NHL needs to answer deserve to be public information. Let’s start with this: Did the league ask Cole to disclose all possible identities of Emily Smith? Taking the Twitter statement at face value should heavily narrow those choices. The number of 4-year relationships Cole’s had almost assuredly doesn’t exceed single digits. If Cole didn’t provide any names, not accepting that answer is the only response. The impression coming off of this investigation, which matters if reality isn’t clear, is that the NHL didn’t give Cole’s case the proper due diligence.

Giving the Lightning, the NHL, or any other participating team the benefit of the doubt here is foolish. Yes, not every sexual assault claim is found to be truthful or will lead to prosecution from alleged abusers or libelous accusers. What I’m taking exception with is hockey’s repeated pattern of not giving a shit about women, with the latest example being the probe into Cole lasting nine days at a maximum. The NHL saw the promotion of several women into assistant general manager positions this offseason, as if that negates toning down years of sexual misconduct allegations levied against its players. Let’s start with Patrick Kane, Jake Virtanen, Evander Kane, Hockey Canada at large, and others. Both Patrick Kane and Evander Kane have denied all wrongdoing, while Virtanen admitted to having a sexual relationship with his accuser, but denied forcing himself on her. Virtanen was found not guilty. The case against Evander Kane was adjourned and dismissed after he pleaded not guilty. Patrick Kane didn’t have charges brought against him.

There are bad apples in every group, absolutely. Conducting solely a week-long investigation into all the claims made by Ms. Smith looks ludicrous. Resorting to a public tweet asking for a direct message from her account is beyond comprehension.