This week brought teams to their 50-game marks, signaling the stretch run for the 10 postseason spots and Major League Baseball’s exciting scoreboard watching.
But Week 19 of this season brought us more than just wins, losses and jockeying in the standings. It brought us stupid quotes from a floundering team, a stupid decision from a franchise with an already spotty track record and more trade rumors, among other happenings.
The Chicago Cubs, Toronto Blue Jays and St. Louis Cardinals showed they will be forces through the season’s final turn. The Washington Nationals and Houston Astros showed they are vulnerable, and the San Francisco Giants took us back to the simpler times of the late ’80s and early ’90s.
More important than all of that, Boston Red Sox manager John Farrell announced Friday he was fighting a “highly curable” form of cancer and will not coach the team for the remainder of the season. He learned he had lymphoma earlier in the week, and chemotherapy will start next week.
The Farrell news is the latest in an eventful MLB week. We wrap it all up here in Bleacher Report’s 10 takeaways from Week 19.