I was going to post about game 1 of the NBA Finals but it was such a disappointing, one-sided affair, it is probably a waste to try to glean anything from it. So, let's put that aside for now and see what happens in game two.

Instead, I want to talk about a shift occurring in MLB. The young stud pitching prospect has once again become a hot commodity. The recent trend in the game over the last decade has been to draft and develop young, hyper athletic, multi-tool position players and try to augment a good young positional core with primarily veteran starting pitchers. The Cubs perfected this strategy to help them extinguish their 108 year world series drought in 2016. The next few years of world series champions all followed suit. The Dodgers of 2020 and Braves of 2021 featured more of a mix of young and veteran starting pitchers. The Astros and Rangers the past two years won with exclusively veteran starters.

While I don't expect to see a drastic change to the rotation dynamics of the top teams. They will still be mostly veteran based, but feature at least one prominent young starter as well. However, the rest of the league after the top heavy elite 5 or 6 teams seems to be shifting back to a strategy of trying to win with young controllable pitching. After years of influx of highly touted young positional player talent, the young arms are the talk of the game this year. A lot of that has to do with Paul Skenes and his blazing fastball being drafted first overall and already being in the majors and making an impact. But it goes beyond Skenes, the league is packed with young pitching talent now. Guys like Skenes, Jones, Skubal, Gill, Singer, Ragans, Kirby, Woo, Strider (unfortunately hurt) are just the tip of the iceberg. The game is littered with young pitching talent and I for one am happy to see it.

Are all these guys going to turn into future hall of famers. Nope. Will some be busts or blow their arms out in the next couple years. Yup. But the game is just better when we are talking about "the next big thing" both on the mound and in the field.

Speaking of baseball. Week 11 pick submission post for the MLB Survivor Pool will be posted shortly from @MLBofficialscorer.

Sats for all, GR