Lohensports

 Just as I got super excited to watch every inning again the Jays go on a 4 game skid including losing both games of a double header yesterday. To show how little I know about the MLB now, I thought they had changed the rules so that double header games are only 7 innings. I guess they changed it back to 9, I'm not complaining! The season is long and rough stretches will happen so I'm not too shook here, though the last few games have certainly been less fun to watch. Anyway, lots to talk about so lets dive in.  4 Game Losing Streak It was bound to happen again at some point! The beauty of the Jays hot stretch in July is that it was done mostly against the Yankees allowing them to build in a bit of a cushion on the division. The season is really long, everything was going right for a stretch and it made the Jays look like the best team in baseball. Now in the last 4 games the Jays have been outscored 40-14 making them look like the Colorado Rockies. There's still some thing...

 By now in the Summer time I pretty much think of a good idea over the weekend, blow it on Monday and am left grasping for something by Tuesday. Which does lead me to just catching up on some odds and ends that I have kicking around in my head. Covering multiple sports today lets just dive in.  Someone Please Sign Chris Boucher By the end of last season, it was clear that Chris Boucher's time with the Raptors was most likely coming to an end. At 31 he was too old to "develop" with the young guys, and too good to put on the floor when the team was actively trying to lose games. Don't get me started on tanking again, this isn't about that. As a result, I feel really bad for Chris! He's a good player who can help teams in the regular season, especially in like an 11th man capacity. The big gripe with Chris in years past was that he wasn't a very smart player. He'd bite on every pump fake and shoot it every chance he got. This past season, Boucher really r...

 Here I was thinking that the summer would be slow with not much to write about. Thank you Blue Jays for having the most exciting season in the last 10 years to fill up my free time and give me ideas to write about. So exciting that tickets for any game against the Kansas City Royals are going for $90 minimum. I guess people have caught on to this team. Anyway, the Jays just took 3/4 against the Detroit Tigers and moved to sole possession of the best record in the entire MLB. With that I've been thinking about the Jays team construction for a while now and with guys coming back and the deadline looming, I am concerned they may have some good problems on their hands: Good Problems To Have The Jays don't necessarily have big stars at every position, but this season with the emergence of a bunch of guys they don't have bad players at any position either. This poses a unique problem for the Jays coming into the deadline, and with players returning from injury. The first good pr...

 Holy this Jays team is a lot of fun. I watched every game this series and came away with a lot of thoughts, mostly around how unserious the Yankees are. For a team that was supposed to be a World Series contender, they have a lot of problems that if they don't address will spell their doom. That being said, the Jays played their game this weekend and they managed to come away with 2/3 games with the 1 loss being a real close one (and of course the game that I was at.) Lets get into it all! Jays Are Built to Beat the Yankees I was trying to come up with a comparison while watching the game yesterday and the only one that made sense to me is the Yankees are the Jameis Winston of baseball teams. Long time NFL fans know that Jameis once had a remarkable 30 TD 30 interception season, something I doubt we'll ever see again. The Yankees have a bunch of guys who can hit bombs, or throw 30 TDs. They also have a bunch of guys who absolutely suck on defense giving it all back, 30 interce...

 As you may now know, every now and then I have a collection of random sports thoughts that are too small to make a whole post about but are still things I want to get out there. Today is one of those days! Bouncing around sports today before getting into Jays mode for tonight when I go to the game. I haven't seen people this excited about the Blue Jays since 2015, I can't wait to see it live.  Damian Lillard Goes Back to Portland This one really caught me off guard! I will be the first to say that I was a Dame hater after his time with the Trailblazers ended. I am not naive, I understand player movement happens and for a player as good as Dame, usually a team has to show a certain level of competitiveness or else they'll ask out. Many players have done this in the NBA without me bashing on their decision, and even sometimes me understanding their decision. The issue I took with Damian Lillard was that in Portland he made his entire personality about loyalty. Any chance he ...

 Happy Monday, we're back at it! The Jays had such a hot stretch coming into the all star break, to the point where I was just coming up with as much Jays content as I could out of pure excitement. Then they lost series against the terrible White Sox and As and I thought they were coming back down to earth again. Turns out the Jays only like to show up against good teams. Coming out of the break the Jays decisively swept the Giants at home to move only 1.5 games out of the best record in baseball. Out of pure excitement for the team again I'm going to just go over some random thoughts about the great weekend they just had.  Everyone Contributes This Jays team is really fun to watch because they're getting contributions up and down the order. The last few years the Jays would have a solid top 4 hitters, but then after that the lineup would drop off and you'd be lucky if they did anything to keep the offense going. This year there's no inning that you can turn off, ev...

 This post is peak offseason content, so buckle up! I wanted to take a second to shout out my favorite free sports related game, BasketBallGM . They have real NBA rosters that you can load and they're decently accurate in terms of player ratings. To do this experiment I loaded the Raptors in 2025/2026 50 times in a row and then simulated the entire season. There were different player progressions in each one and the AI made its own moves. For the Raptors, I left them untouched other than signing Sandro Mamukelashvili to start each season. I let the seasons play out how they played out and there were some interesting, maybe discouraging results. The important thing here is to remember that this doesn't really matter at all. It's a simulation based on what the game thinks players will be like next year, so it certainly isn't perfect. Lets dive into the results! The Overall Data Average W/L record: 39/43 Most Wins: 51 Least Wins: 28 Times made playoffs: 27 Times won a roun...

 Today is just a big hodge podge of a post because I have a bunch of little ideas but no idea big enough for its own post. For the first time in a while I actually didn't even watch the home run derby last night, completely forgot that was going on. I guess without a Jay in the competition it's hard for me to get into it. Anyway, here's some things that I've been thinking about all combined into 1 post:  Steelers Trade for Jalen Ramsey I wanted to do a fully flushed out reaction to this, but then I realized I'm maybe not knowledgeable enough to break down cornerbacks and safeties the way I'd like. With that in mind, we're going to do a quick emotions driven reaction! It's now been a couple of weeks since the Steelers traded free safety Minkah Fitzpatrick for CB Jalen Ramsey and TE Jonnu Smith. Initially my reaction was sweet we got Ramsey! Jalen Ramsey at one point was the best cornerback in football and he had the personality to go with it. Say what you...

 Ah the all star break, I thought about taking one of those myself given there's nothing on in the world of sports right now other than summer league. The Raptors summer league team has kept me pretty entertained though, they have a ton of guards who try really hard on defense which is fun to watch against the lesser competition of summer league. I thought about recapping another summer league game, but there's guys who are better at that doing that right now. I suggest listening to the Hello and Welcome podcast they are my favorites. I thought it might be fun to go back to this article  from November 6. If you were an early reader of this blog, you know I was very excited about the stretch where Gradey Dick was essentially the Raptors number 1 option putting up huge numbers. I made 3 comparisons in that article that put Gradey's first 8 games up against 3 future hall of famer's entire second seasons, which is pretty hilarious looking back at it. Now that Gradey has a w...

 Ok, maybe I jynxed the Jays yesterday by talking too much about the win streak. I guess all good things come to an end! Lets pivot to summer league where the Raptors kick off in Vegas tomorrow night. The Raps team is actually pretty solid this year! Summer league doesn't really matter so I am not going to belabor this, I mostly wanted to go over some guys I'm excited to see on the court and some thoughts on what they can do.  Notable Raptors Summer League Players: Starting off lets just list the guys who have the best chance of being on the Raptors roster come October. Anything can happen, remember Jamison Battle was a random dude on the summer league team until he fought his way into a role on the team and now has a contract for this season. I am not going to be the guy who predicts the next Jamison Battle so lets list the obvious ones:  Guards: Jamal Shead Ja'Kobe Walter Alijah Martin Chucky Hepburn AJ Lawson Forwards:  Collin Murray-Boyles  Jamison Battle Jo...

 The first 10 game streak since 2015! Last night's game was a bit cheap given that it got rained out in the 6th inning, but they were up 6-1 against the White Sox at that point so I'll take the bullpen rest day. They've got a shot to tie the franchise record 11 game win streak today at 2pm, but before then I thought it'd be fun to name 10 Jays in honour of them winning 10 straight. Since there are 10 positions if you include the DH, why not go around the diamond and name my favorite Jay off the top of my head at each spot.  P - Marcus Stroman  I'm going to probably have such a heavy 2015 bias on this list because that's when I peaked as a Blue Jays fan. I really hope that this super fun season is doing for kids and teens what that team did for me! Stroman was a dawg in Toronto. I still remember at the start of 2015 Stroman tore his ACL in spring training, a devastating blow to the Jays already thin rotation. In September, he miraculously was ready to pitch again...

 Another quick one today! With Norman Powell being traded shortly after I posted yesterday I thought it'd be a perfect opportunity to break down the 3 team trade in my post today. Also a quick shout out to the Jays who just won their 9th straight, keep it rolling guys lets go!  The Trade Clippers Get: John Collins Jazz Get: Kevin Love, Kyle Anderson, 2027 Clippers Second Round Pick Heat Get: Norman Powell  LA Clippers  At face value, I'm not sure I totally understand why the Clippers would do this. Norman Powell was really good for them last year averaging 22ppg on 61.5% true shooting, he made himself into a legit scoring option and helped keep the offense afloat with Kawhi missing most of the season (as usual). They do have other options at guard bringing back James Harden, Khris Dunn, Bogdan Bogdanovic, but none of those guys are as dynamic scoring the basketball as Powell is at this stage of their careers. They do get a pretty good player back in Collins though. B...

 Short one today, but how could I not comment on the Toronto Blue Jays who are on an 8 game winning streak while playing some really exciting games. Usually to string together 8 wins you'll have a game or two where you win in dramatic fashion, but this streak has been nearly all dramatic victories which has been really fun to watch. The city is slowly starting to buzz again about the Jays as we see them now expand their lead in the AL East to 3 games and it's about time Lohensports buzzes about them too.  Yankees Series Ok I really dropped the ball talking about Myles Turner instead of the first time in franchise history that the Jays swept the Yankees in 4 games at home. Not much to say other than that was awesome. Starting with the Canada Day game where the Jays in their special red uniforms exploded for 12 runs against the Yankees including 2 HRs by George Springer, one of them being a grand slam, with 7 RBIs as well. Something about slapping the Yankees at home on Canada D...

 It completely slipped my mind that I didn't even mention the whole Damian Lillard / Myles Turner situation yesterday. Lots going on right now so these posts aren't exactly planned out. I even did a whole paragraph comparing Jakob Poeltl to Myles Turner because they got pretty much the exact same contract, lol my bad. We'll get to that in full today along with some other little tidbits from the NBA. I also need to direct my readers to the MLB standings where on July 3 you'll see the Toronto Blue Jays in first place in the AL East. What kind of sucks is the Yankees are still pretty good and somehow someway the Rays just keep coming. They're playing in a minor league stadium, nobody watches that team and yet they're still 0.5 games back in the division. Going to be a fun August and September! Anyway, back to ball:  Bucks Waive and Stretch Lillard, Sign Myles Turner This was the first page of every NBA site and first topic on every NBA podcast, but it's a day 2...