Wednesday's List of 13: Mid-week musings…….

Wednesday's List of 13: Mid-week musings…….

13) Phillies fired hitting coach John Mallee Tuesday, replacing him for rest of this season with 75-year old Charlie Manuel, who managed the Phillies when they won the 2008 World Series.

Manuel managed the Phillies for nine years, winning NL pennants in 2008-09. He wasn’t at the Phillies’ game Tuesday night.

12) Must be a ton of $$$ involved in running fantasy football leagues. ESPN had a live fantasy draft on national TV Tuesday night, as they wrapped up a 26-hour fantasy football marathon. Fantasy drafts are usually fun to be a part of, just not so much fun to watch.

Related comment: ESPN has gone down the drain in recent years, just don’t like the way they do things as much anymore, but the 26-hour football thing they did this week was good. Maybe they should try something like that for baseball next spring.

Actually, it is surprising that ESPN doesn’t tout NBA fantasy leagues, seeing how they talk about the NBA 365 days a year now.

11) The more I think about it, it makes sense that I suck at fantasy football because I can’t grasp the concept that quarterback isn’t the most important position on fantasy teams.

10) Mariners 11, Tigers 6— How bad do you have to be for Detroit to be -$160 against you? Tigers are now 11-41 in their last 52 games, just an awful team, but Seattle is pretty terrible too.

9) Indianapolis Colts QB Andrew Luck’s calf strain has turned into a high-ankle issue, which is bad news for Indy- they can’t pinpoint exactly what the problem is.

8) Oregon Ducks landed 6-11 center N’Faly Dante, who moved up from Class of 2020 to this year’s freshman class, as Oregon restocks a roster ravaged by five early departures last spring.

Dante figures to team with UNLV transfer Shakur Juiston to lead the Ducks back to the NCAAs; this news pushed Oregon back into the preseason top 25.

7) Baseball stuff:
— Colorado Rockies DFA’d veteran C Chris Iannetta.

6) New England Patriots’ recent history in divisional games:
— Won 28 of last 31 games with the Bills, won last 8 visits to Buffalo.
— Won 14 of last 16 games with the Jets, six of last eight in NJ.
— 6-5 in last 11 games vs Dolphins, 1-5 in last six visits to Miami.

5) Houston Astros are in line to become the first team ever not to issue an intentional walk all season.

4) Arizona State announced that true freshman Jayden Daniels will be its starting QB on August 29, with true freshman Joey Yellen as his backup; this is thought to be the second time a I-A team has gone into the season with two true freshmen atop their QB depth chart- Texas Tech in 2013 had Baker Mayfield and Davis Webb, both of whom are in the NFL now.

3) There are people in this world who actually get upset about the ketchup/mustard debates that pop up on social media. I mean, we have some screwed-up things going on in the world today, condiments should be the least of our problems.

I once had a date go in the ashcan (imagine that?) because my female companion got annoyed when I asked for ketchup to put on my food. This happened in Chicago, and apparently putting ketchup on food is mostly frowned upon there. Who knew?

2) Braves 5, Mets 3— Ronald Acuna led off the first inning by hitting a ball off the wall in deep right-center field, but didn’t hustle out of the box and only got a single. He later scored anyway.

Acuna homered later in the game and threw a runner out at home from left field; he is really, really good, but he is still only 21 and will probably get even better.

1) Awful Announcing released their ratings for local TV announcers; I’m going to do my own ratings later this month, but in their ratings, Padres-Giants-Mets were top three teams.

Nationals-Pirates-Tigers were three lowest-rated announce teams; I would strongly disagree with the Detroit ranking. Jack Morris is really good when he talks about pitching, and Kirk Gibson is a solid analyst. Matt Shepard asks his analysts good questions and they discuss the answers openly. Very unfair rating.

Armadillo