When you last heard from Monday Morning Coffee a week ago, I began speculating whether or not the Rams were done with their offseason roster improvements. Just hours later, they shocked everyone and acquired one of the best players in the NFL, Myles Garrett, to bolster their defense further. This is the type of move that you make to put you over the top and win the Super Bowl. Once again, credit to Les Snead for going all-in and recognizing that the window to win is right now, and it’s important to maximize it. As for the Aaron Donald rumors, I still can’t see him coming out of retirement, no matter how much we hear noise about it. Also, as cool as it sounds, he hasn’t played NFL Football in more than 2 years. People think that just because the dude is banging the weights and doing a few crunches at LA Fitness a couple of days a week that’s he’s ready to compete against NFL Players. When you are away from that level of competition for that long, even if you were great, it’s not always easy to get it back.
To baseball, where the Dodgers took 2 of 3 against the Angels over the weekend. They have won 18 of their last 24 games and have a 7.5 game lead in the NL West. The only concern for the Dodgers in the immediate is injuries, and how it impacts their outlook come playoff time. On the pitching side, Tyler Glasnow suddenly looks like he’s going to be out for at least another two months, while Edwin Diaz and Blake Snell are trending closer to mid-July. Those three are pretty crucial to the playoff hopes of The Boys in Blue, and it feels more like 2 of those 3 are strong bets to be healthy by October. Ironically, the one without the arm injury is the most concerning, in Glasnow. Slowly but surely though, Roki Sasaki is looking like an elite pitcher. Over his last 4 starts he’s gone 24 1/3 innings, with a 1.48 ERA, .74 WHIP, with 29 strikeouts. That’s changes the whole rotation outlook in the event that they can’t get Glasnow or Snell back healthy.
Then there’s the Angels, who still have the worst record in the AL, despite salvaging 1 win against the Dodgers. Memo to the Angel fans chanting “Arte sucks” and “sell the team!”: keep it up! However, don’t use any profanity, because you will apparently get thrown out of the games and nobody wants to see you get thrown out or else the protests will end.
After watching the first 3 games of the NBA Finals, the Lakers should really think about how to build their team. I know they talk a lot about building it around Luka Doncic the way the Mavericks did. However, they really should think about building it the way the Knicks did. They have two outstanding hard nosed two-way wings in Mikael Bridges and OG Anunoby, which the Lakers severely lack. They also don’t have a great big man either like Karl Anthony Towns, who is pretty versatile, despite all the criticism he’s taken over the years. They also finally learned that you need to play more than 5 guys guys, and have some depth behind their starters: Mitchell Robinson, Landry Shamet, Miles McBride, Jose Alvarado. $50 million sounds like a lot of cap space until you realize you need all these things.
Finally, the LA Kings are very close to naming their next head coach. The good news is that it’s probably not going to be DJ Smith, which would just be a lazy elevate the interim guy move. The bad news is, it will likely be some former Edmonton Oiler loser like Jay Woodcroft. The best hope for the Kings is that it’s Peter Laviolette, who would be a fresh voice and a solid choice. I still think they should fight harder with the league and wait for Bruce Cassidy to be available, because he would truly be the best coach out there for him. Ultimately though, this organization is going nowhere until they clean house from top to bottom.
