There have been 14 points race this NASCAR season and the combination of Kevin Harvick (5), Kyle Busch (4) and Martin Truex Jr. (2) have won 11 of those 14 races. There are 22 races left this season and you have to wonder if there will be any other drivers to step up and challenge these three. Busch is the current points leader with Harvick right behind him. Truex Jr. is currently 4th in the driver standings as Joey Logano is holding down 3rd place. Logano has one win on the season, but it’s the five Top 5’s and eleven Top 10 finishes that have him sitting this high in the driver standings.
Since Harvick, Busch and Truex Jr. all have their win to get themselves into the NASCAR playoffs there goal win be to get as may playoff points as they can. Right now Harvick and Busch have earned 25 playoff points while Truex Jr. has picked up 13 playoff points. No other driver has double digit playoff points yet.
NASCAR added stage point scoring a season back where drivers can accumulate points by where they finish at different points of a race, which they called stages. The Top 10 drivers in a stage get points. A driver gets 10 points fro winning a stage and then the points drop by one to where the 10th place finisher of the stage gets 1 point.
This season Harvick has the most stage wins with 7 while Busch and Austin Dillon have picked up 5 stage wins. Truex Jr. finds himself a little behind in stage wins as he has just three so far tis season.
Now the NASCAR playoffs are a long way away and when you’re dealing with a sport where any type of mechanical failure could wipe out your championship chances you just never know what might happened, but with the way this season has been going it’s a good bet that either Harvick, Bush or Truex Jr. ends up holding the championship trophy after the November 18th race at Homestead-Miami Speedway.
The NBA Finals took an extra day off as the series moves across country for Game 3 tonight in Cleveland.
The Cleveland Cavaliers had a great opportunity to steal Game 1 in Oracle Arena, but J.R. Smith made a play that will go down as one of the all-time playoff blunders. Game 2 was a different story as the Golden State Warriors came out and made a statement on their home court to take a 2-0 lead in the series.
When you look at these two teams it’s clear that LeBron James is the best player in the series, but the Warriors are easily the best team in this series. Now when this series was starting I picked Golden State to win it in 5 games and I believe Cleveland will win one of these two games on their home court; possibly tonight.
If you’ve listened to the Sports Time Radio podcast you know that I think there’s a lot of manipulation that goes on through the NBA playoffs and I don’t think the finals are any different. I’m expecting Cleveland to be heavily favored in tonight’s game by the officials. Now the home team normally gets more foul calls and ends up shooting more free throws and I fully expect the breakdown to go like that tonight. You have to remember that ESPN along with TNT greatly overpaid the NBA for the rights to televise games and the NBA wants them to think they got their monies worth.
It’s no real shock that Golden State and Cleveland ended up in the finals against each other again. Cleveland is really the only marketable team in the Eastern Conference; so who else was going to get to the finals? I don’t think that the NBA or the television providers would’ve been upset in the Houston Rockets had found their way into the finals, but you have to think that Golden State was the first choice. Besides the Rockets was their another Western Conference team that you think they wanted to see in the finals?
I’m not going to say that the games are fixed as I believe that they are more manipulate. The right whistle here or there or maybe just the fact tat the whistle didn’t blow could can the out come of a game very easily. I believe that Adam Siler is the smartest out of all the commissioners and he wants to keep the people who give the large amounts of money happy.
Major League Baseball held their draft this week and they are trying very, very hard t make it an must see event like the NFL or NBA draft and it’s just not going to happen for them. It’s understandable that they would want their draft to raw as much interest as the NFL or NBA draft does, but the sport is so different from what the NFL and NBA do that it’s never going to be looked at the same way.
It’s a pretty easy comparison to make. Baker Mayfield as the #1 draft pick by the Cleveland Browns in the NFL draft. Since they haven’t had their draft yet this year will go back to last years where the Philadelphia 76ers selected Markelle Fultz with the #1 pick. No these two players went directly to the teams that drafted them and they get to play at the top level of their respective sport right after the draft. Baseball doesn’t quite work like that.
Let’s look back one year. In 2017 the Minnesota Twins took shortstop Royce Lewis with the #1 pick. Now unlike Mayfield and Fultz Lewis was assigned to the Twins Gulf Coast League. Lewis played 36 games there before being moved up to the Twins Class-A team the Cedar Rapids Kernels. Lewis finished up the 2017 season with Cedar Rapids playing in 18 games. Now after spring training Lewis went right back to Cedar Rapids where he’ll probably send the majority if not the entire season. This year the Detroit Tigers had the #1 pick in the draft and they took pitcher Casey Mize. Now Mize just like Lewis last season will probably report to the Tigers rookie league team and then possible finish out the season in Class-A. Now we should get to see both Mayfield and Fultz play for their teams this season. How long before we’ll get to see either Lewis or Mize play a game in the major leagues?
This is the reason that the MLB draft will never have the same kind of following as the NFL, NBA or even NHL where the top draft pick skate for the team that picked them right away. The waiting period is always going to hold the popularity of the MLB draft back and there’s just no way to change that.
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You can also find me on Twitter @Burketime
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