Big Picture

Sri Lanka did not embarrass themselves in the two ODIs, but they did not come close to winning a match. On the surface, their prospects in the T20I series seem even bleaker. Pakistan are the top-ranked T20I side in the world, having won 11 of their past 13 series in the format. Sri Lanka, meanwhile, are ranked eighth, and will even have to play the preliminary round of next year's T20 World Cup in order to qualify for the tournament. They won the T20 World Cup as recently as 2014, but their form in the shortest format nosedived shortly after. They have lost five of their last six series.

Regular captain Lasith Malinga took four wickets in four balls in Sri Lanka's most-recent T20I, but Malinga, along with many other first-choice T20 players are not here. Instead, the team is led by Dasun Shanaka, and the 16-man squad features only two players over the age of 30 - Nuwan Pradeep and Isuru Udana. As was the case in the ODIs, this series is a test for Sri Lanka's next generation. Can the likes of 24-year-old wicketkeeper-batsman Minod Bhanuka and 22-year-old allrounder Wanindu Hasaranga make the transition to international cricket? They showed glimpses of quality in the ODIs, but need to make waves in the T20s as well, to really capture the selectors' attention.

Although over the past two years Pakistan have a good T20 record, their 2019 numbers are not quite so impressive, having lost three of the last four matches they've played. With their batting firepower bolstered by the likes of Umar Akmal and their verstility improved by Faheem Ashraf, they will hope to reimpose themselves in the format against a seriously depleted Sri Lanka.

ALSO READ: Should Pakistan worry about Sarfaraz Ahmed's form?

Form guide

Pakistan LWLLW (completed matches, most recent first)
Sri Lanka WLLLL

In the spotlight

Pakistan's fielding had briefly been outstanding, during the back end of Steve Rixon's stint as fielding coach. Since his departure from their dressing room, though, their fielding standards appear to have slipped substantially - the ODI on Wednesday pockmarked by repeated ground-fielding errors, including a comically woeful attempt at stopping an errant throw, which yielded four overthrows as two fielders fell over in its wake. In T20s, where an extra 10 runs can mean the difference between a comfortable win and a very tight finish, Pakistan's fielding will be under the microscope.

Sri Lanka's death bowling will be substantially weakened by the absence of Malinga, which means some combination of Nuwan Pradeep, Isuru Udana, Lahiru Kumara and Kasun Rajitha will have to step up. Malinga has not had a reliable death-bowling partner since the falling away of Nuwan Kulasekara, with whom he had once built an outstanding long-term partnership. Here is a chance for the other quicks to showcase their nerves, in what is an audition to be Malinga's death-overs partner.

Team news

Umar Akmal is likely to slot into the middle order, while Babar Azam is likely to open. On the seam-bowling front, they will have to decide between Wahab Riaz, Mohammad Amir, Usman Shinwari and Mohammad Hasnain.

Pakistan (possible): 1 Fakhar Zaman, 2 Babar Azam, 3 Haris Sohail, 4 Sarfraz Ahmed (capt.) (wk), 5 Umar Akmal, 6 Iftikhar Ahmed, 7 Imad Wasim, 8 Faheem Ashraf, 9 Shadab Khan, 9 Wahab Riaz, 10 Mohammad Amir

With Minod Bhanuka having played a decent hand with the bat on Wednesday, he may be preferred to Sadeera Samarawickrama. Pradeep will likely make the XI for his experience, while Isuru Udana is also likely to slot into the XI.

Sri Lanka (possible): 1 Danushka Gunathilaka, 2 Avishka Fernando, 3 Shehan Jayasuriya, 4 Angelo Perera, 5 Minod Bhanuka (wk), 6 Dasun Shanaka (capt.), 7 Lahiru Madushanka, 8 Isuru Udana, 9 Wanindu Hasaranga, 10 Kasun Rajitha, 11 Nuwan Pradeep

Pitch and conditions

The weather is expected to remain good for the duration of the match, but given the cooler evenings in October, teams may have to contend with some dew on the outfield. The pitch is expected to be decent for batting.

Stats and trivia

• Babar Azam's recent T20 record is no less fearsome than his ODI record. Since the start of 2018, he averages 54.21 in the format, with a strike rate of 134, across 16 innings.

• Only five members of Sri Lanka's T20 squad in Pakistan played the team's most-recent T20, against New Zealand last month.

• Pakistan have won 13, and lost only five of their T20s against Sri Lanka. They have won each of their last six encounters in the format.

BEREA, Ohio -- Cleveland Browns receiver Jarvis Landry has cleared concussion protocol and is practicing.

Landry suffered a head injury at the end of a 29-yard reception off a shovel pass in the third quarter of Cleveland's 40-25 win over Baltimore last Sunday. Despite missing the fourth quarter, Landry finished with eight catches for a career-high 167 yards.

Landry's return means quarterback Baker Mayfield could have his full complement of wide receivers for Monday night's game at San Francisco.

Rashard Higgins is back after missing three games with a knee injury, and Antonio Callaway is back following a four-game league suspension for a substance abuse violation.

Their absences allowed the Ravens to concentrate on Odell Beckham Jr., which opened things up for Landry and Cleveland's running game.

Landry has 18 catches for 328 yards this season. He has caught at least two passes in 82 consecutive games, the league's longest active streak.

New York Giants running back Saquon Barkley has been officially ruled out of Sunday's game against the Minnesota Vikings as he continues to recover from a high ankle sprain, the team announced Friday.

Although he hasn't officially practiced with the team this week, Barkley has been working out on the side. He said he "felt good" after running on Thursday and even got to open up and cut a bit more than the previous day.

Wayne Gallman, who had 118 total yards and two touchdowns against the Redskins last week, will get the start for the second straight week.

Coach Pat Shurmur went as far as to say on Thursday that he thought it was realistic that Barkley could return this week.

Initial reports put Barkley's absence at 4-8 weeks. Barkley, who was injured in Week 3, was taking handoffs on the side and cutting at near full speed 11 days later.

A return next week on Thursday night against the New England Patriots could be a possibility.

The Giants also ruled out linebacker Alec Ogletree (hamstring), linebacker Tae Davis (concussion) and listed linebacker Lorenzo Carter (neck) as questionable.

ESPN's Jordan Raanan contributed to this report.

MUMBAI, India -- NBA commissioner Adam Silver said he's giving "serious consideration" to starting a professional basketball league in India, perhaps in the next five years.

While Silver expressed hope for a potential league in India, he added that a lot of work had to take place nationwide in terms of facilities to reach that goal.

The NBA had to add seats, big video screens, lights and much more for the first-ever preseason game in India between the Sacramento Kings and the Indiana Pacers on Friday night at NSCI Dome. A source said the venue also had stray dogs and birds residing there in recent years.

"One of the things we need, though, is more of an arena infrastructure," Silver said prior to Friday's tipoff. "I think this is where [Sacramento Kings owner] Vivek [Ranadive] was a little ahead of the schedule that we might otherwise have been on. This is a fantastic facility we're in today, but it required us bringing in a court, a scoreboard, seats, locker rooms. And it's relatively small, certainly by NBA standards.

"I have had some interesting discussions with developers over the last two days here. I think it's inevitable that there will be state-of-the-art arenas in major cities in India, in part because these are multi-use facilities and live entertainment is increasingly important here as well. Of course, a great arena can have concerts and other shows. But we do need to see those arenas over time in order to play more games."

Ranadive, who is from Mumbai, envisions a pro basketball league in India one day -- potentially called "Monsoon Madness" -- and has talked to the country's prime minister about the idea. The NBA is starting its first internationally sanctioned professional basketball league outside of North America next year -- the Basketball Africa League.

"It's a game that can be played in cities and villages. It can be played inside, outside, by boys, by girls, one person, a few people, rich, poor. It doesn't matter," Ranadive said. "What I see happening, is that within the next 10 years, this game, it'll never surpass cricket as the national pastime, but it'll be right up there. And hopefully ... we can launch a league right here in India."

Silver appeared more optimistic about a player coming to the NBA and WNBA from India in the next five years.

"I hope that within five years we have an Indian player in the NBA," Silver said. "And I think for serious consideration of a league, I'd use that same timing."

ATLANTA -- Ronald Acuna Jr. remains in Atlanta's lineup, hitting leadoff and playing center field, for Game 2 of the NL Division Series against the St. Louis Cardinals.

Acuna drew criticism from manager Brian Snitker and his teammates for his lack of hustle on a long fly ball in the seventh inning of the Cardinals' 7-6 win in Game 1 on Thursday night. Still, Acuna had three hits, including a two-run homer, and he remains a key to Atlanta's hopes in the series.

Brian McCann is Atlanta's starting catcher for the second straight game, this time for right-hander Mike Foltynewicz.

The Cardinals have their same starting eight position players behind ace right-hander Jack Flaherty. Second baseman Kolten Wong and shortstop Paul DeJong swapped spots in the batting order, with Wong hitting sixth and DeJong seventh.

HOUSTON -- The division series round is upon us, and it's a high-powered eight-team bracket -- the most high-powered ever, in fact. The eight teams still in the running for the 2019 World Series won a combined 794 games during the regular season. That's more than any other divisional round in postseason history, and four more wins than in 2002. A few more wins here and there and we'd be looking at an LDS round in which the average team won 100 games.

Even though we've never seen such fierce competition this time of the year, there is still one team that has risen above the rest in the eyes of the oddsmakers, prognosticators and MLB pundits: the Houston Astros.

That the Astros are a consensus pick is very different than saying they are a unanimous pick. Here at ESPN, we had 30 of our observers cast a ballot in our annual playoff picks poll. Twenty-nine of the 30 picked the Astros to win their ALDS matchup against the Tampa Bay Rays. Twenty-seven picked Houston to advance to the World Series. And 19 picked the Astros to win their second championship in three years. But it's not just us -- according to Caesars Sportsbook, the Astros are a 2-1 favorite to win the Fall Classic.

It's certainly true that the Astros were historically powerful during the regular season. Their plus-280 run differential was the 13th-best of the modern era (since 1901) and the third-best since World War II, behind only the 1998 Yankees and 2001 Mariners. No one disputes Houston's dominance. But how could such a consensus emerge when so many other dominant clubs are around to block the Astros' path, beginning with a Tampa Bay Rays club that is riding high?

"You gotta play the game," Astros center fielder George Springer said Thursday. "That's a really, really good team over there. And every team that advances is gonna be even better."

Exactly, but here's something that Springer might not be aware of: He is a fixture on what might be the best postseason roster ever assembled. And while Mark Twain and others might accuse us of some unwieldy statistical wrangling in making that comment, the fact of the matter is that you don't have to dig that deep to make the observation.

The genesis of this was a question: Someone asked me if there had ever been a better October collection than what the Astros have going for them in 2019. You scan the roster and it's easy to see why someone might think this is the case. Jose Altuve. George Springer. Alex Bregman. Carlos Correa. Justin Verlander. Gerrit Cole. Zack Greinke. Rookie phenom Yordan Alvarez. It is, on the surface, awfully impressive, elite players with lustrous pasts and just-as-gleaming presents. But there have been lots of impressive teams assembled over the centuries. Does this one really stand out that much?

I decided to take two databases and merge them. One was the all-time, season-by-season WAR information from Baseball-Reference.com. The other was the season-by-season postseason game logs from the essential Lahman Baseball Database. The Lahman data was needed to identify each team's postseason roster. It's not a perfect approach -- some players didn't play and thus don't count, thus the rosters of wild-card losers look small-ish, for example. But those teams weren't going to end up on top of this analysis anyway; we're just going for a proxy of year-by-year postseason rosters.

Using only the players who actually made a postseason appearance filtered out any player who might have made key contributions in the past but weren't part of the picture in the relevant October. For example, the 1939 Yankees don't get credit for the career performance of Lou Gehrig, who was in uniform for the World Series that year but was unable to play because he had already been diagnosed with the disease that now bears his name.

Here is the first thing I found: In terms of cumulative WAR -- the total number of wins above replacement compiled by the players during their careers up to the season being measured -- Houston ranks pretty high. The Astros are 42nd of 450 postseason teams since 1901. That's impressive, but it wasn't really answering the question.

The Astros' position players are still a pretty young group, averaging 28.94 years of age. That ranks 306th among the playoff 450, so they haven't had that much of a chance to accumulate career WAR. And having a bunch of old greats around isn't what we're looking for. The all-time leader by this measure is the 2007 Yankees, who didn't even win their division or a playoff series. They top the list because they had a collection of aging greats such as Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, Roger Clemens, Mike Mussina, Johnny Damon, Bobby Abreu and Jason Giambi.

To answer the question at hand, I created a derivative metric called "Active WAR." This takes the average WAR for the previous five seasons for each player (or, for younger players, the average of however many seasons they played), adds the WAR total for the season being measured and divides by two. Here is one example:

Dizzy Dean's 1938 Active WAR calculation
1938 bWAR: 2.53
1937: 4.86
1936: 7.56
1935: 7.32
1934: 9.45
1933: 5.61
Average for 1933 to 1937: 6.96
Active WAR: 4.75 (6.96 plus 2.53 divided by 2)

Why Dizzy Dean? I like Dizzy Dean, that's all. Who doesn't like Dizzy Dean? Anyway, I made this calculation for 10,030 players who either showed up in those Lahman postseason game logs or in my projection of this year's 25-man playoff rosters. The idea is to capture a measure of both track record and right-now performance at the same time.

Here then are the top 10 postseason rosters in terms of Active WAR since 1901. Some teams that strung together several postseason runs show up multiple times -- such as those Jeter-era Yankees teams -- so rather than listing a bunch of Jeter-Posada clubs, I picked the high-water mark for each team's era.

1. 2019 Astros (Active WAR: 65.71)
2. 2002 Yankees (61.81)
3. 2008 Red Sox (56.37)
4. 1932 Yankees (54.59)
5. 2011 Phillies (53.83)
6. 1953 Dodgers (53.68)
7. 2017 Dodgers (53.42)
8. 1990 Athletics (53.13)
9. 1977 Yankees (52.61)
10. 2000 Braves (52.57)

Now, there are some complaints that might spring to mind, such as roster sizes through time. I ran a version of this that focused only on the top nine hitters and top six pitchers on every team and took a per-player average to account for teams that didn't use 15 players, such as wild-card teams or early World Series clubs. The Astros finished atop the leaderboard by that adjusted version as well.

This year's Astros are loaded, perhaps more loaded than any playoff team we've seen. They are loaded not just because of the terrific careers of their players, but also because of their collective right-now performance. This isn't a 1928 Athletics roster, which was great but also featured tail-end Hall of Famers such as Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker and Eddie Collins.

What might be the most impressive thing about this version of the Astros is how balanced they are. Their hitters rank 11th among the postseason 450 by Active WAR; the pitchers are 13th. No other team, even those recent-vintage Yankees clubs, has both units in the top 20. According to ESPN Stats & Information research, Houston's combined OPS+ and ERA+ (246) is tied with the 1910 Athletics (the "$100,000 Infield" club) as the second-best ever, behind only the 1927 Yankees.

"There's no doubt that their starting pitchers are dominant," Rays manager Kevin Cash said of the Astros on the eve of his team's matchup against Verlander. "We're going to face a guy that's arguably the best pitcher for the last decade and a half, two decades. But their offense is right there with them."

There are only six players in this year's postseason with an Active WAR of 6 or better. Houston has three -- Bregman, Verlander and Greinke. Bregman is a top candidate for this year's AL MVP, Verlander might win the Cy Young, and if he doesn't, it'll be Cole. That feeling -- that there is something different about the Astros -- is warranted. That feeling is what convinced so many of us that the Astros were destined to win it all before the games actually began.

Yet we know, and the Astros know, such a lofty résumé doesn't guarantee a thing. But it helps -- among the top 50 teams in Active WAR, 25 went on to win a pennant and 15 won the World Series.

"I think, actually, this year's team has a lot of similarities to the team in '17," Bregman said. "I just think there's only one thing on our mind, and that's to win. Nothing else."

For the rest of us, our minds will be on the fact that we are watching a great team trying to validate itself as a historical entity, a 21st century dynasty that we will remember for a run of seasons involving multiple titles, and not just one. Either way, whether the Astros stomp their way to another championship or get knocked off by any one of seven other worthy challengers, we'll know we've seen something special.

For the Astros, this is all insolent noise. All that matters is Friday's game against the Rays at Minute Maid Park, and what has come before has no bearing on what will happen. That has been their attitude all along.

"The Rays have a better record," Astros manager AJ Hinch quipped on Thursday. "They're 1-0. In the postseason, they're beating us. We'll be the underdog and try to keep up with them.

"I don't think [being the favorite] is a big deal. I just want to win Game 1 tomorrow. I don't want to talk about the World Series or favorites or odds or who has more talent, who doesn't. I want to win Game 1. And that day-to-day mentality has served us really well."

ROSEVILLE, Calif. – Derrick Doering will race for Billy McAnally Racing in the NASCAR K&N Pro Series West NAPA Auto Parts/ENEOS 150 at All American Speedway on Oct. 12.

Doering races the No. 46 NASCAR Limited Modified in weekly competition at All American Speedway. He was one of a dozen drivers eligible to receive the opportunity from the late model and modified divisions, by virtue of competing full-time at the track.  Doering won the award during the driver’s meeting on Sept. 14, then went on to win his first main event of the season later that night in a 30-lap contest.

“Normally I race in the Limited Modified Series at All American Speedway,” he said. “We just got fitted in one of the (K&N) cars, see how I like it and how they like me, and run on the 12th.

“What’s the same (about the Modified and the K&N car)? Nothing! They’re full blown race cars and the real thing. Impressive work. These cars are beautiful.”

The NASCAR K&N Pro Series West effort is a stark contrast to his Modified campaign, where he is the only crew member who prepares the car on a weekly basis.

“At home (with the Modified) it’s just me and my girlfriend Danielle,” Doering said. “She puts up with a lot with me out there working on it. Fortunately, on race days I do have help that come out and do what they can. Hopefully we’ll continue to be successful and possibly run both the Modified and the K&N car this next race out there.”

The NAPA Auto Parts/ENEOS 150 is the biggest race of the year at the speedway, with a large fan turnout expected and the only nationally televised race in the region on NBCSN. More than $100,000 in cash and prizes are awarded during the event.  Doering – like many of the drivers at the speedway – knows the importance of the event and the excitement level it brings to Roseville.

“I can’t even explain it. Incredible,” Doering said. “The amount of people in the stands and the amount of people that are going to come to watch me. It’s a dream come true.”

The St. Louis Blues have signed center Brayden Schenn to an eight-year, $52 million contract extension, the team announced Friday.

Schenn's new deal comes off his fourth straight season in which he scored at least 50 points. He tallied 17 goals and 37 assists in 2018-19.

The contract ties Schenn to the Blues through the 2027-28 season.

Schenn joined the Blues in the 2017 offseason after the Philadelphia Flyers traded him. He won his first Stanley Cup with St. Louis last season.