By Bob Priddy, Missourinet Contributing Editor
(BASEBALL)—Our teams limp into baseball oblivion.
(ROYALS)—The Kansas City Royals, predicted here to lose their 100th game by the time we filed our next entry, added some drama by waiting until Sunday to do it. When the lights went off Sunday night, the Royals stood 44-100. They won the race with the Oakland Athletics by the slimmest margin. The A’s finished he week 44-99, but had to fight their way to a 5-5 record in the last ten games to avoid being #1.
(CARDINALS)—The Cardinals will guarantee their losing season this week. They started Monday Night at 63=80. It’s been sixteen years since a Cardinals team lost that many games. They could muster only one hit yesterday against the Reds in a 7-1 loss. Miles Mikolas, who is now 7-11 is 1-6 in his last nine starts.
(COMPARING SOME STATS)—The St. Louis Cardinals have used 28 pitchers this year, looking for someone, anyone, who can consistently perform. Those pitchers are giving up an average of 4.75 earned runs a game.
The Cardinals have five batters hitting in the .270s (Goldschmidt .273; Nootbar .273; Walker .271; Arenado .270. Nootbar has played only 99 games. Donovan, with 90 games, is at .284).
The Royals have used 35 pitchers this year. Their opponents are hitting .363 against them, a reason why the team ERA is 5.21. Only Bobby Witt Jr., is batting as high as .270.
(HOW’S JACK DOING?)—-Jack Flaherty looked pretty good when he arrived in Baltimore from the Cardinals. But the bloom is off the rose for Jack. He’s averaged about 4½ innings for each start. He has a 7.16 ERA and opponents are ripping him at a .363 average.
(FOOTBALL)—The Real World settles in with the Tigers and the Chiefs.
(CHIEFS)—-Chris Jones has decided to play football for the Kansas City Chiefs this year after all. Monday, he agreed to a one-year deal that will make him a free agent after this season. ESPN reports the agreement is loaded with incentives that will let him make a boatload of additional money if he meets the goals. This year was to have been the fourth and last year of his four-year, 80-million dollar contract with Kansas City.
And there might be some more good news. The Chiefs say Travis Kelce is making good progress recovering from his hyperextended knew and they hope he’s available for next weeks game against the Jaguars.
The Chiefs unfurled their World Championship banner before last Thursday night’s game and then got smacked back to reality by the Detroit Lions. The defense did a decent job but too many hands dropped the ball on offense. Kadarius Tony, who missed most of training camp with a torn meniscus was targeted five times by Patrick Mahomes and had one running play—and had zero yards. Coach Andy Reid says he won’t bench Tony. Reid says, “He’s got great hands, so we just got to keep working through it.”’
(MU)—The Missouri Tigers are a not-very-comfortable 2-0, having to work a lot harder they did last weekend against the Middle Tennessee State Blue Raiders. Missouri hung on for a 23-19 win over a second FCS School. Missouri is 2-0 for the first time since 2018. But they didn’t look good against MTSU.
Next Saturday, the real world comes calling. The Kansas State Wildcats, also 2-0, are ranked 15th in the nation. K=State beat Troy 42-13 last weekend with Quarterback Will Howard threw for 250 yards and three touchdowns and ran for two more. It’s the fourth straight game for the Wildcats to score 40 or more points. The Wildcats come in with the country’s 15th toughest rushing defense and 7th ranked in scoring defense.
Missouri leads the series 60-33-5. K-State whipped the Tigers 40-12 last year.
Now, the Motor Boys:
(INDYCAR)—Scott Dixon waited too long to get hot in this IndyCar season. Dixon won the season finale at Monterey, his third win in the last four races of the series. But he still finished 78 points behind Alex Palou, who had a five-win season and never finished lower than eighth in any of the 17 races.
Dixon survived a race that repeatedly has been described as “chaotic,” beginning with a six-spot starting penalty for making an unapproved engine change after the morning warmup. He started 11th and that put him right in the middle of the first tangle of cars on the first lap. In the melee, Dixon’s car bumped the car of Rinus Vikay, who wound up in the gravel off-road area. IndyCar officials ordered Dixon to take a drive-through the pits, which dropped him to the end of the field.
The agitated Dixon, however, started working with team strategist Mike Hull on a strategy that let him climb back through the field and skip a pit stop the rest of the field had to make. He took the lead for good on the 78th of the 95 laps and built on it until he crossed the finish line 7.3 seconds ahead of Scott McLaughlin. Palou was third.
There were eight yellow flags, forcing the pace car to turn so many laps that it had to be refueled to make sure it would have enough gas to lead later caution periods.
He heads into the offseason with 56 career wins and will be back next year look for a seventh championship that would tie him with A. J. Foyt for the most titles in a career. The final points standings show Palou, who also drives for Chip Ganassi, then Ganassi teammate Dixon and McLaughlin third.
The naming of Marcus Armstrong as the IndyCar Rookie of the Year made history for Ganassi. No team has previously finished 1-2 in the standings and also landed the Rookie of the Year.
(NASCAR)—Tyler Reddick made a bold move on the apron of the Kansas Speedway to start the green-white-checkered sprint to the finish and hung on to lock in his spot in the next round of the NASCAR playoffs. He beat his team owner, Denny Hamlin, to the finish line by three-tenths of a second. Reddick drives for 23XI racing, partly owned by Hamlin, who drives for Joe Gibbs.
Hamlin appeared to have the race in hand and was two seconds up on Reddick when the final caution came out for Chris Buescher’s blown right rear tire.
It’s Reddick’s fifth career win, his second one of the year. He said he couldn’t get to the front until “chaos ensued” on the re-start and he got below Hamlin and grabbed the lead. Hamlin blamed himself for Reddick to grab the lead because he was trying to protect his position from another driver and was “kind of sleeping on the restart.”
NASCAR’s next race is at Bristol. It’s a cut-down race. Four drivers will drop out of playoff contention. Twelve will run in the next three races to cut the field to eight.
(Photo credits: Bob Priddy and Rick Gevers)