July 13, 2026
Well here we are, at the baseball All-Star Break. The Dodgers are at the break with an 11 1/2 game lead in the NL West, and the best record in baseball. I’m going to ignore the fact they were completely embarrassed by the Diamondbacks over the weekend, suffering a 3-game sweep and showing some awful defense, and lackluster offense. They have 6 players on the all-star team. I’m going to chalk this one up to a bunch of guys who were mentally checked out and ready to go to Cancun for a week to vacation with the wives and kids. As for the roster, they have 2.5 weeks to make an important decision. If Tarik Skubal is available, do they trade for him? As I look at the wear and tear on Shohei Ohtani, the questionable health of Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, and the incredible load on the shoulders of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, I think Skubal makes sense if you don’t have to gut your farm system. Since he will likely be a rental, he probably won’t require gutting their farm system either. Plus, keeping Skubal away from an NL rival like the Brewers is important. Justin Wrobleski has been nice, but I much prefer the idea of him and Emmet Sheehan coming out of the bullpen in the playoffs at this point.
As for the Angels, they enter the All-Star break with the worst record in baseball. They also just drafted 20 players in the MLB Draft. I’m sure everyone is wondering will anything change, specifically if they will be more process oriented, rather than rushing their prospects to the big leagues and ultimately seeing them fail. We know very little about these players that were drafted. Ultimately, development is the name of the game, and the Halos have yet to show us they can develop anybody. I think it’s also fair to say that if Reid Detmers or Jose Soriano are still on this team by the end of July, this franchise remains unserious, and firing Perry Minasian was simply just another move for optics. I also think now is the time to try and trade Mike Trout because his value is back up again, and he is an All-Star. They would have to approach him about a trade, but it’s the sensible thing to do.
To the NBA, where the off-season is slowing down but the Lakers are still waiting out a few things. Namely, Jonathan Kuminga to sign with them. Adding Kuminga would be a really nice acquisition for the Lakers, and I don’t see how there is a market for him outside of LA. Nobody is going to pay him over $20 million for him, and he might not even get a starting gig with another team. If the Laker can get him, this suddenly becomes a very interesting team. It’s especially interesting if you’ve seen the Adou Theiro and Cameron Carr play summer league ball. Theiro is an athletic freak who has the potential to be an outstanding POA defender if he puts his mind to it. Carr is quickly showing he can be a nice rotational wing player, which is exactly what the Lake Show needs to elevate them into true contender status. Otherwise, contrary to what the talking heads are saying, this has actually been a pretty good off-season for the Lakers. I still think though the sensible thing for Lebron to do is re-sign with the Lakers, even though it won’t happen. They have a perfect spot for him at the starting 4, plenty of depth around him, and two guys to take the scoring load off his shoulders. The longer this drags on for without him signing in Cleveland, the more it makes me wonder.
As for the Clippers, I told you last week a Kawhi trade didn’t make any sense! Sure enough, the league is putting the trade on hold until they are done with the Aspiration investigation. It’s embarrassing it’s taking this long for Adam Silver to put a deadline on this. Now he’s going to create all kinds of ripple effects on other moves and franchises. To make the only way to fairly punish the Clippers is to fine them heavily, take away a few draft picks, and if you’re really savage, suspend Steve Ballmer for a year. Kawhi is more complicated though. The real punishment for him I believe is making him play on a minimum deal for the season, although they could just suspend him for a year too. He ultimately wants to get paid again, so if his contract is terminated, he loses a year salary, and he has to risk injury on a bad knee to get paid again. At the end of the day, I don’t see a scenario where Kawhi doesn’t end up in Toronto so both sides can move on, but this could get a little messy in between.
The USMNT World Cup run came to an end last week against Belgium. Now we can all stop caring about soccer until 4 years from now. Look it was a nice run that created excitement, but in reality, the US benefitted from playing some weak ass teams, then just got exposed by Belgium. I’m also tired of hearing about the US not having its best athletics play soccer, as opposed to other sports, otherwise we would dominate. That’s a bunch of crap. The USA has 330 million people. Belgium has 11 million people. France has 68 million people, Spain has 50 million people, England has 58 million people, and Argentina has 46 million people. We have plenty of great athletes playing soccer, but we simply don’t develop the skill and talent the way these other countries do. Are we getting better? Ok maybe a little, but so are other countries relative to us so we aren’t closing the gap. It’s also not a problem that just throwing money at can fix. This isn’t college football where a $40 million roster suddenly vaults you into the World Cup Final Four. We just haven’t figured it out yet, and I’m not convinced we are any closer to doing so.
Finally, we are nearly halfway through season 3 of House of The Dragon. I have to say, this show doesn’t quite have the writing of Game of Thrones as much as I want it to. Game of Thrones is all about “the bad guys”, that loyalty gets you killed, and if you don’t resort to underhanded tactics, you will likely not come out on top. It was brilliant, despite its rushed ending. House of the Dragon seems more a story about how a botched line of succession from greed is going to screw up a dynasty, and cause some amazing dragon creatures to go extinct. I’m not saying I’m not going to watch it. I’m still in it, and plan to be until the end. However, it just isn’t capitalizing on reeling the audience in like Game of Thrones so far.
