It’s my Parting Shot for my Monday Musings, plus an appearance from T-F-P…..

In my humble opinion, the main reason why the Saskatchewan Roughriders lost in Edmonton on Saturday was their defence’s inability to stop the Elks from making big plays. There were at least five significant gains of 30-plus yards and if the Riders could’ve reduced those by even half, they win! Sure, Brett Lauther missed two field goals – but they were from 50 and 56 yards! Sure, the offence didn’t seem to do a lot until the final five minutes, but give credit to Edmonton’s “D” for bending, but not breaking! The Green and White are still in the “cat bird” seat for first place in the West – and should get there by winning Friday in Ottawa. T-F-P will have more to say about that in this commentary on Friday!

I love the Ryder Cup. Match play golf is the original format for the sport to be played. And, Europe won over the Excited States because they know how to play as a team. Team play accounts for 16 of the 28 points. Win the majority of those and the Sunday singles matches, where the Americans can show off, shouldn’t really matter!

Like John Schneider said, the Blue Jays didn’t win the American League East the hard way, they won it their way! Four straight wins, with the Yankees putting the pressure on, was great weekend theatre!

However, that brings me to The Fearless Predictor and the Major League playoffs starting tomorrow with the four best-of-three wild-card series – two in each league. My favourites to do well are the teams that best combine effective starting pitching, with stingy bullpens and contact, safe hitting. Pitch velocity and hitting for power is nice – and may be sexy – to a lot of fans, but I still like to believe that baseball is a sport of finesse and executing fundamentals – especially at this time of the year! Taking that into account, the wild-card series winners will be Boston over the Yankees and Cleveland over Detroit in the A-L; San Diego over the Cubs and the L-A Dodgers over Cincinnati in the N-L. The N-L-D-S winners will be Milwaukee over San Diego and Philadelphia over the Dodgers. The A-L-D-S winners will be Cleveland over Seattle and Boston over Toronto. The League champions will be Boston over Cleveland in the American League while Milwaukee stops the Phillies’ shot at a repeat title. In the end, the Brewers do everything I mentioned very well – starting pitching, the bullpen and hitting – and overwhelm the Red Sox!

That’s my Parting Shot. I’m Les Lazaruk…and it turned out nice again!