Cubs third baseman Kris Bryant left Tuesday night’s 6-0 loss to the Pirates after the fifth inning with a left wrist contusion. X-rays were negative and he isn’t expected to play on Wednesday.
Todd Archer ESPN Staff Writer Close Covered NFL since 1997, Cowboys since 2003 Previously covered Bengals and Dolphins Lives in Dallas area with his wife and two children Follow on Twitter FRISCO, Texas — The first reaction to a plan that’s not working is to burn the whole thing down. Fire everybody
GUYANCOURT, France – Team golf is a different animal. Passion lies in every one of the 24 players in this week’s Ryder Cup, yet it comes in different forms. There are the fire guys. The ones whose eyes roll in the back of their head with every birdie and whose fist pumps have the power of a Mike Tyson uppercut. And there are the ice guys. The cool, calm and collected assassins. The ones who can crush you without changing expression. Seemingly immune to nerves. For Europe the powder kegs ready to explode are led by veterans Ian Poulter and Sergio Garcia and include Rory McIlroy plus rookies Jon Rahm and Tyrrell Hatton. Team USA counters with the likes of Captain America Patrick Reed, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Justin Thomas. On the ice side of things the Euros have current and former FedExCup champions Justin Rose and Henrik Stenson, plus Open Champion Francesco Molinari and Alex Noren. The U.S. looks to the likes of Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka here. So when you have such differing styles at each end of the spectrum, what is the best plan of attack when it comes to pairings for the crucial Fourball and Foursomes formats? Should you put two fire guys together and hope they get hot enough to scorch a trail toward a point or is that just opening you up to self-combustion? Are two ice guys too perfect to complement each other – will they just frustrate the passion out of their opponents with clinical precision? Or will the lack of fire bring a lull? Or is the best method a blend of both? A fire guy to lift the ice man and the ice man to calm the fire? “Those are personalities you want. You want to have a bit of everything on your team, and they can fit into every situation that you’re going out in,â€� European Captain Thomas Bjorn says. He’s been weighing up the merits of what balance will work best for him for months given his side particularly has quite a few players at the far ends of each spectrum. “It’s more about how they get on with each other and how their games match,â€� Bjorn counters. “There’s a lot of things that play into it. They all are very different, but some guys that are calm can deal with a guy that’s very fiery on the golf course, but some guys want to have it a little bit different and a similar type. “It’s about talking to them individually and not say, okay, you two do the same thing and then you play well together. That doesn’t always happen. It’s about talking to them individually and figuring out what they actually like to play with.â€� Team USA Captain Jim Furyk – a guy who would fit perfectly into the ice side – says it’s about a balance. “You look back to Luke Donald and Sergio GarcÃa, the fiery and the stoic, and they made a great pairing together,â€� Furyk says. “I think as a captain, I like to talk to the guys throughout the year, do you like to play with someone who is fiery and pumps you up, or do you want someone who is a little bit quieter? “You try to get an idea of everyone, what makes them tick and what makes them play their best, and you try to pair those type of personalities together.â€� Fresh off his FedExCup victory, Justin Rose opened up on the subject. With a fire man in Poulter, Rose has a 4-1 record in the Foursome and Fourball formats in the Ryder Cup. With the quintessential iceman in Stenson he sports a 4-2 record. So Rose has had success with fire and ice. “I feel I can feed off both. But if anything the fire helps me,â€� Rose admitted. “Henrik has fire deep down though, he keeps it hidden. But the only thing with two of us like that, you can go flat sometimes, I’ve experienced that. So it is good to have options in the team room and we have plenty of those options this week.â€� Furyk is fundamentally against two of the same type together, saying you rarely see two fiery guys or two ice guys do great together. “You might not pair Bernhard Langer with himself because they are just even keel. You pair him with a guy that’s feisty, a Seve, and you kind of get the ham-and-egg effect of things,â€� Furyk said. “If Patrick (Reed) and Sergio (Garcia) were on the same team, there would be a lot of fire, I’ll say that. There would be a lot of passion for one grouping,â€� he added. “You don’t often see that.â€� Yet if practice pairings are anything to go by, Furyk could indeed send out a blazing pair with Woods, Reed, Thomas and Spieth potentially in a pod together. Woods and Reed, or even Woods and Thomas, would certainly bring a new level of intensity, rivaling what Reed and Jordan Spieth have come with in the past. On the European side, with two very fiery rookies in Rahm and Hatton, Bjorn has to decide how best to harness that. “I can play with anybody, but I believe I will play with somebody experienced,â€� Rahm says. “They are not going to put two rookies up on Friday morning. So I will be playing with somebody, either Stenson, Sergio, Rory, Rosey, Poulter, Fran, somebody who knows what’s going on and who can most likely keep me under control on a Friday morning. “I feel like I’m going to have electricity coming out of me, so you can imagine I might tee off with somebody who is a little more calm than me, which is not hard to do. “It’s like two players becoming one, so I think we feed off the best of each other. “It will help me, if I’m playing with somebody like Justin Rose, it will help me calm down a little bit and my emotion will maybe help pump him up a little bit. So I think it benefits both ways.â€� While Rahm admits he might need a calming influence, the European side is very cognizant of not changing a player’s natural demeanor. “There’s no point in trying to be something that you’re not,â€� Molinari says. “I’ll be the same me that I’ve always been, and we’ll see, if I get paired with someone that has a bit more flair, probably there will be a balance.â€� Hatton might be the wildcard in many senses of the word. Known as a hot head on the course when things don’t go his way the Englishman has admitted to needing to monitor his temper. He made a point to say he’s looking to stay more “level-headedâ€� in the heat of battle this week and “not turn into the Hulk.â€� But Bjorn wants the fire to stay. So he’s looking for someone to ride it with him. “I want him to be Tyrrell Hatton in everything that he does, so you’ve got to find somebody that deals with those things very well,â€� Bjorn says. “I’m not here to try and change any of those 12. They are here because of who they are and that’s what they have got to go with. It’s not my job to change Tyrrell. He will go out and play with the passion and heart he has.â€� However each team slices it, it will be fascinating to watch.
A day after Phil Mickelson said that both he and Tiger Woods would “welcome� a Ryder Cup partnership, U.S. captain Jim Furyk all but squashed the idea.
Playing against Tiger Woods has always been intimidating. Playing with him at the Ryder Cup hasn’t been much easier. Will this time be different?
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff says he is willing to “play the long game” when it comes to the careers of Esteban Ocon and George Russell, and he has made clear that he is not willing to enter into a bidding war for the remaining seats on the 2019 grid.
GUYANCOURT, France – Newly minted FedExCup champion Justin Rose has put his celebrations on hold to concentrate on continuing home dominance for Europe in the Ryder Cup. He’s hoping for a double celebration come Sunday. Rose was rewarded for an extremely consistent 2017-18 PGA TOUR season last weekend at East Lake when his T4 result was enough to claim the FedExCup trophy. His year included wins at the World Golf Championships – HSBC Champions and the Fort Worth Invitational and boasted 11 top-10s and 15 top-25s from his 18 starts. Rose stood tall in the final three FedExCup Playoff events, finishing 2-2-4 and culminated with a clutch birdie on the 72nd hole Sunday to claim the $10 million bonus. It’s a windfall his teammates have been reminding him of in jest. “Apparently all the drinks are on my tab this week and all that type of stuff. We’ve been having fun with it, so I guess there is that element,â€� Rose said. “The FedExCup for me, it finished on the plane. I enjoyed the plane ride over, but once I landed in Paris, I was one of 12 guys. I didn’t want it to carry over into this week. This week is about another job to do. “I can shelf the FedExCup for another week or so. I will certainly enjoy it. It’s kind of a season-long (achievement) that you really want to enjoy. But I’d like to maybe start that party on Sunday night.â€� While Rose obviously wanted to win the TOUR Championship claimed by Tiger Woods, the Englishman said the pressure of knowing what was needed to win the FedExCup – and actually executing it – puts him in a great frame of mind for his fifth Ryder Cup. “It does a lot for my confidence. I’ve been playing consistently well. Obviously, I think that’s ultimately the way I won the FedExCup was through my consistency season long, and that obviously does give you confidence coming into this week,â€� Rose said. “Specifically, if I boil it down to just having to play that last hole to win, the feelings that I faced there are going to be very similar to the feelings I’m going to face this week in order to try and close out a point and win a point. So there will be moments I can draw upon that this week when trying to deliver for Team Europe.â€�
Dial ‘D’ for last-week drama, because the NL Central, West and wild card races could go to any of the five teams chasing four playoff spots.
The Yankees savored their first celebration of the season Saturday at Yankee Stadium, as Aaron Hicks’ 11th-inning double chased Didi Gregorius home with the run that stamped their entry into the American League Wild Card Game, the seventh Wild Card berth in franchise history.
The Astros reached 100 wins for the second year in a row, and third time in team history, and won their second consecutive American League West title after a win over the Blue Jays on Tuesday night at Rogers Centre. Astros rookie right-hander Josh James held the Blue Jays to one run and four hits in five innings, and Alex Bregman clubbed a two-run home run in the first inning — his team-high 31st of the season — to put Houston ahead, a lead they would not relinquish. Toronto’s lone run came off the bat of outfielder Billy McKinney, who slugged a solo home run in the third.
