Blogs – Page 35 – Keefe To The City

Apr 1, 2023

MLB Bets: Saturday, April 1

Here are the bets for Saturday, April 1.

Finally, another full slate of games. The hype and anticipation of Opening Day followed by the scheduled day off for most teams is such a letdown.

Here are the bets for Saturday, April 1.

White Sox-Astros Under 8.5 (-115)
The only wager I had yesterday was White Sox-Astros Under 8 (-115), and the final score was 6-3. In order to lose the under, the following needed to happen:

– Christian Javier (who has the lowest batting average against of all major-league starters since 2020) allowed three straight doubles in an inning.

– Lance Lynn walked four batters after not walking more than two in any start last season.

– With two outs and no one on in the sixth, Lynn allowed a base hit to Jose Abreu after being ahead 1-2 and then got ahead 1-2 on Kyle Tucker before allowing a two-run home run to him.

– In the bottom of the seventh, with two outs no one on, Kendall Graveman walked Martin Maldonado (who walked in 7.8 percent of his 3,320 career plate appearances), then allowed a single to Jeremy Pena and then walked Alex Bregman. Rookie manager (and moron) Pedro Grifol then brought in Jake Diekman (of all pitchers) to face Yordan Alvarez and Alvarez hit a three-run double.

– Still sitting on eight runs in the bottom of the eighth and knowing the White Sox weren’t going to score in the ninth against the Astros bullpen, Jose Ruiz walked Kyle Tucker to lead off the inning, Tucker inevitably stole second and then scored on a ground ball single just past the outstretched glove of Elvis Andrus.

It took all of those wild events for that wager to lose and to barely avoid a push. Just bad luck.

I’m going back to the under well on this series for a third straight day.

Nearly all of the Astros’ success against Lucas Giolito has been from Jose Altuve and Michael Brantley, and neither are playing. Yordan Alvarez and Kyle Tucker are a combined 3-for-18 against Giolito.

The White Sox, as a team, have putrid numbers against Jose Urquidy: 6-for-41. It’s going to be hard for me to not take the under whenever the White Sox face a right-hander this season, especially when the under is 8.5.

Yankees -135 over Giants
I was not expecting the Yankees to only be -135 favorites today. Every once in a while the books hang a truly bad line (for them) and everything about this at -135 seems like they hung a bad one.

Outside of Michael Conforto (1-for-3) and Roberto Perez (0-for-1), the Giants haven’t seen Schmidt before. That will work in his favor at least the first time through the lineup. With how deep and rested the Yankees bullpen is and the day off yesterday with another day off coming on Thursday, Aaron Boone is likely planning on five innings at most from Schmidt (unless he’s cruising, his pitch count is low and the Yankees have a large lead). That won’t be enough time for the Giants to figure him out, if they do at all.

The Yankees as a team hit Alex Cobb well (with the exception of Giancarlo Stanton, who is 1-for-12 against him), and Gleyber Torres (3-for-7 with two home runs) hits him exceptionally well. I expect Boone to run out the same lineup from Opening Day with maybe Aaron Hicks in over Oswaldo Cabrera (and Torres at second with DJ LeMahieu as the designated hitter, though that wouldn’t change the batting order).

Braves -230 over Nationals
Padres -230 over Rockies
-101
Sometimes you see a pitcher’s numbers against a specific team and you can’t get money down fast enough on the game. That is the case here as the Nationals have struck out in half of their at-bats (13 of 26) against the Braves’ Spencer Strider. That’s outrageous.

I recently heard that the Nationals don’t have anyone in their lineup projected to have above a wRC+ 99 in 2023, which means their entire lineup features below-average major leaguers. How that is possible and allowed and not viewed as anything other than strictly tanking I do not know, but in terms of wagering, this entire season will be parlaying the Nationals’ opponent with another strong favorite.

That other strong favorite today is the Padres. The Padres have dropped the first two games of the season to the really, really bad Rockies. For a team picked by many to unseat the Dodgers in the NL West and represent the NL in the World Series, the first two games weren’t exactly a ringing endorsement. That will change on Saturday when the Padres face Jose Urena, who has expectedly poor numbers against the Padres and will likely be on the wrong end of a Padres offensive explosion after they scored just three runs in their first 18 innings.

More to come for Saturday’s games.

Here are the bets from yesterday .

Blogs • MLB Bets

Mar 31, 2023

MLB Bets: Friday, March 31

Here are the bets for Friday, March 31.

After a near-perfect day on Opening Day (4-0 on money line bets, 1-0 on an under with the only loss being the three-team parlay), there’s only bet for today in what is a disappointing five-game slate.

Here are the bets for Friday, March 31.

White Sox-Astros Under 8 (-115)
It’s going to be hard to not take every White Sox under this season against a right-handed starter, and tonight they will face arguably the best starter in baseball in Christian Javier. As a Yankees fan, I’m very familiar with Javier, who started the combined no-hitter against the Yankees last June and then shut them down in Game 3 of the ALCS.

Lance Lynn is going for the White Sox, and while he doesn’t have great numbers against the Astros, as a control specialist, I trust him to now allow more than a few runs by avoiding walks. I’m expecting an outstanding start from Javier, so as long as Lynn doesn’t get absolutely rocked, I feel confident.

Here are the bets from yesterday.

Blogs • Yankees • Yankees Thoughts

Mar 31, 2023

There’s Nothing Better Than an Opening Day Win

Opening Day always feels more important than other regular-season games, even if it holds the same value as the other 161 regular-season games. It feels like a playoff game.

On Wednesday, I overheard someone ask, “When is Opening Day?” When is Opening Day? When is Opening Day?! WHEN IS OPENING DAY?! I couldn’t understand how someone couldn’t know when Opening Day is. It’s a day I know as soon as the schedule is announced during the prior season. It’s a day I count down to. It’s a day I eagerly and anxiously wait for. Every year.

This offseason seemed to go by incredibly fast. Maybe it’s because the Yankees gave us a somewhat extended postseason run into late October. Maybe it’s because of the mild winter we had. Maybe it’s because I have a two-and-a-half-year-old and an 11-month-old that I’m trying to keep alive every day. I don’t know what it is, but it feels like I was just walking out of Yankee Stadium during (yes, during) Game 3 of the ALCS knowing I wouldn’t be returning to it until this season.

A year ago on Opening Day, Gerrit Cole laid a first-inning egg against the Red Sox, the way he always lays an egg against the Red Sox, and the Yankees had to overcome an early hole on their way to a walkoff win. On this Opening Day, Cole walked the first batter of the game on four pitches for the second consecutive season, and I began to wonder if that was an ominous sign for the season.

Cole wasn’t hurt by that walk though. Instead, he struck out the side. The only thing that he would hurt in the game would be his pitch count as he racked up strikeout after strikeout, which left me yearning for the chance for the Yankees to compete in the NL West rather than the AL East with this type of competition. Cole would go on to dominate the feeble Giants offense, striking out 11 and setting the Yankees’ Opening Day strikeout record. It was as dominant a pitching line as Cole has put together as a Yankee, even if his stuff didn’t look as sharp as it can be when he’s completely on.

If you had to pick a pitcher to beat these Yankees, Logan Webb would probably be that pitcher. Everything he does well as a pitcher combats what the Yankees do well as an offense. As a hard-throwing righty who doesn’t allow home runs, he would face a nearly-all-right-handed lineup on Thursday wanting to hit home runs. Like Cole, Webb was really good, striking out 12 in six innings, but the Yankees were able to do exactly what they wanted to do against him and what they want to do against every pitcher: hit home runs.

I kept thinking on Thursday what if Aaron Judge were batting in the top of the first for the Giants at the Stadium instead of in the bottom of the first for the Yankees. It was close to happening and for a few minutes on December 6, we all thought it was going to happen. Thankfully, Judge is a Yankee, and thankfully, he was there batting second on Thursday and driving a Webb sinker into Monument Park. Webb had to be thinking, “What the fuck just happened?” because Webb doesn’t allow home runs (just 11 in 192 1/3 innings last year), and certainly not home runs like that.

It took until the bottom of the third inning for Anthony Volpe to get his first major-league plate appearance. The rookie shortstop swung at the first pitch he saw (very Derek Jeter-esque), and ended up drawing a seven-pitch walk, in which he saw five balls, but unfortunately, Laz Diaz was the home plate umpire. Once on base, everyone knew Volpe was going to run, including Webb, who threw over to first with Volpe standing on the base. Volpe did run, did steal second and looked every bit like a major leaguer in his debut. He made a nice play off-balance on a slow roller on the infield grass and turned a perfect double play with DJ LeMahieu later in the game. To think, just five months ago Yankees fans had to watch Isiah Kiner-Falefa play shortstop every day.

With one out in the bottom of the fourth, the Yankees were still holding a 1-0 lead and the game under that opened at 7.5 and closed at 6.5 looked like it should have been set at 4.5 or even 3.5 To that point in the game, there were two hits and 17 strikeouts. Despite all the rule changes, it looked exactly like a Yankees game from the past. The game was flying by, but it wasn’t because of the pitch clock. It was because no one was putting the ball in play. There had been just two hits in the game through 4 1/3 innings.

Josh Donaldson changed that with a single on a ground ball to left field before Gleyber Torres extended the one-run lead to three with a two-run home run to right-center. I have been an advocate for trading Torres since the end of the 2021 season, but like I wrote in Yankees Thoughts earlier in the week: I’m fine with Torres being a Yankee, but feel like he should no longer be a Yankee. If he remains a Yankee, so be it. If he’s traded, so be it.

It would be hard to argue for the Giants having had a real threat in the game. They had the walk to lead off the game. They had a runner on second with two outs in the second. They had a leadoff walk in the fourth. They had a runner on second with one out in the seventh. Those were their “threats” for the day. The only threat was that of Cole giving up his pair of home runs that he seems to allow every start, and those home runs never came. Instead the Giants were held to four singles (two from ex-Yankee Thairo Estrada who continued the theme of every ex-Yankee playing well against them), and they never had multiple baserunners in any inning. That’s likely to happen often this season for the Giants, who have Wilmer Flores batting third.

Aaron Boone didn’t have to do anything. He got to stand in the dugout, chew his gum and play with his oversized watch. That’s how I wish every Yankees game would go. Cole gave them six shutout innings, the bullpen added three more shutout innings and the offense did enough to get the win. Boone never had to interject himself on Thursday, and any reliever he called on would have likely shut down the Giants, including Albert Abreu. But it was Wandy Peralta, Jonathan Loaisiga and Ron Marinaccio who did it in on Opening Day. (It was very odd that Boone had Loaisiga only throw two pitches and get one out and then asked Marinaccio to pitch two innings and throw the most pitches he has ever thrown in a game.)

It was as good a Yankees Opening Day win as you could ask for. Cole dominated, Judge did what he does, Volpe looked like he belongs, Torres continued with his returned power from last season and the bullpen was as good as expected. The only Yankee who went home feeling down was Oswaldo Cabrera after going 0-for-4 with strikeouts. I’m not worried about Cabrera, but you just know Boone will now likely play Aaron Hicks in left on Saturday. I would have mentioned Hicks as feeling down for not being in the starting lineup or playing on Opening Day, if not for his comments last season about playing time: “If I’m a guy that’s in the lineup, cool. If I’m not, it is what it is.”

Opening Day always feels more important than other regular-season games, even if it holds the same value as the other 161 regular-season games. It feels like a playoff game. And because of that, there’s nothing worse than an Opening Day loss especially with the scheduled day off following. But there’s also nothing better than an Opening Day win, and there wasn’t anything better on Thursday.

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Blogs • MLB Bets

Mar 30, 2023

MLB Bets: Thursday, March 30

Here are the bets for Thursday, March 30.

Baseball is back! Betting on baseball is back!

Here are the bets for Thursday, March 30.

Yankees -175 over Giants
Normally, I would be hesitant about this. More than hesitant. I probably just wouldn’t do it. Gerrit Cole on Opening Day as a Yankee hasn’t been good. Logan Webb, who dominates right-handed hitters (of which nearly the entire Yankees lineup is) and doesn’t allow home runs (the way the Yankees plan on winning) is a really bad matchup for this Yankees team. But again, it’s Opening Day, and I’m not not going to bet the Yankees on Opening Day.

What makes me feel a little better about backing Cole and going against Webb in a perfect spot for Webb is that the Giants suck. Wilmer Flores bats third for the Giants and Joc Pederson fourth. Thairo Estrada bats sixth! (I guess I shouldn’t be shitting on other lineups with the Yankees having Josh Donaldson fifth.) It’s not a good team, and this is a lineup Cole should overpower. But again it’s Cole, and I wouldn’t trust him to tell me what the day of the week it is, let alone go out and shut down a bad team when it’s going to “feel like” 34 degrees at first pitch on Thursday. If it weren’t Opening Day, I would be passing. But it is Opening Day, so here’s to starting off the season with a decision that I won’t be able to second-guess because I’m first-guessing it.

Braves -255 over Nationals
Angels -210 over Athletics
Padres -215 over Rockies
(+201)
Are parlays smart? Of course not! Is it Opening Day? Yes, it is! Like the Yankees at -175, I wouldn’t normally advise for a three-team parlay, but again, it’s Opening Day, and the Nationals and Athletics are the two worst teams in baseball and the Padres are going to be really, really good.

The scariest part of this parlay is the last scheduled game with the Padres and the Rockies. I don’t trust Blake Snell, and German Marquez is always capable of dominant performance. I will take my chances that the Padres at home coupled with Marquez’s career being defined by him not being able to put it together consistently will bring this one home. (And if the parlay does come down to the Padres-Rockies game, I will hedge or live bet my way out to some profit.)

Rangers -135 over Phillies
I don’t know when the last time Jacob deGrom was only -135 in a game, and I don’t know the next time he will be, if ever. The Phillies as a team have hit .192/.262/.269 against deGrom in 214 plate appearances, and the best two hitters have been Bryce Harper (.930 OPS) and and Rhys Hoskins (.637 OPS), and neither of them will be playing on Thursday.

Mets -130 over Marlins
This is a coin flip with Max Scherzer going against Sandy Alcantara, but this is more about me picking for the Mets offense and against the Marlins offense, not me thinking Scherzer is better than Alcantara. I don’t even like the Mets offense (I would have liked it a whole lot more with Carlos Correa), but I like it enough that a game started by Scherzer at -130 against a really bad offense makes it worth it.

Blue Jays -120 over Cardinals
Miles Mikolas being the Cardinals’ Opening Day starter isn’t a great look for the Cardinals. (Luckily for them, they play in the NL Central.) Unluckily for them, they are playing the Blue Jays on Opening Day and someone like Mikolas who doesn’t miss many bats and relies on the ball being hit at defenders will be in one against this Blue Jays offense. While Alek Manoah might not have been as good as his numbers suggest he was last year, I have seen him shut down the Yankees down enough to know what he’s capable of. There won’t be many days this season the Blue Jays are -120.

White Sox-Astros Under 7.5 (-105)
It’s going to be hard to not like the under in every White Sox game this season like last season. They suck. Dylan Cease is good, but their offense sucks. And if they are a right-handed heavy lineup that can destroy left-handed pitching, Framber Valdez isn’t just any left-handed pitcher, he’s the best in baseball. The absence of Jose Altuve and Michael Brantley and a very weak 6 through 9 for the Astros makes this line incredibly appealing.

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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!

Mar 27, 2023

Yankees Thoughts: Anthony Volpe Provides Vigor to Old, Stale, Injured Roster

This week there will be Yankees baseball. Real, meaningful baseball. We made it. Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

This week there will be Yankees baseball. Real, meaningful baseball. We made it.

Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.

1. I was very close to ending my relationship with the Yankees as a fan.

If Anthony Volpe had been sent down on Sunday instead of being named to the Opening Day roster, that would have been it. After calling the shortstop situation an “open competition” entering spring training and having Volpe win that competition outright, it would have been a disgusting and unacceptable act by the Yankees to have him start the season in Triple-A. It would have meant not fielding the best possible team based on merit and production simply because of a lack of Triple-A time and a need to manipulate service time. For an organization that has performed egregious act after egregious act in recent years, not making Volpe a major leaguer after the spring he just had would have topped them all.

2. Thankfully, Volpe is a Yankee. I’m sure there are many in the front office who are disappointed Oswald Peraza didn’t outperform Volpe this spring, so that the service time clock would have been delayed on Volpe to save the Yankees some money in 2029, as if 2029 or saving the richest franchise in the sport (recently valued at $7.1 billion) matters. The Yankees went into spring training wanting Peraza to be the Opening Day shortstop and wanting Volpe to begin the season in Triple-A. But after the disparity in offensive production this spring, there was no possibly way the Yankees could have spun having Volpe go to the minors without their fan base revolting. Not having enough games at Triple-A was no longer a valid excuse. Because what constitutes enough games at Triple-A anyway?

3. Unfortunately, because of Volpe’s promotion to the majors to be the everyday shortstop, Peraza ends up back in Triple-A due to poor roster construction and poor roster management — a staple of the Brian Cashman Yankees in recent seasons. Peraza is no longer a Triple-A player, after having demolished the competition in his final months at the level. He has nothing more to prove or gain playing against minor-league players, but that’s where he finds himself because of the Yankees’ self-created infield logjam.

4. My Yankees’ infield would look like this:

Anthony Rizzo, 1B
Oswald Peraza, SS
Anthony Volpe, 2B
DJ LeMahieu, 3B

That infield doesn’t include Josh Donaldson or Gleyber Torres.

Cashman and Aaron Boone can say whatever they want about believing in Donaldson as a bounceback candidate for 2023, but the simple fact is that if he weren’t owed $21.75 million for 2023 and an $8 million buyout after 2023 (totaling $29.75 million), he would no longer be a Yankee.

“The things he did this winter to get himself ready to go, I think you’re crazy to think that a bounce back is not in there offensively,” Boone said of Donaldson as he hit this spring exactly like he did in all of 2022. “This guy still has bat speed, and is super talented. He’s in a much better place than he was a year ago right now.”

If his contract had expired after last season, he wouldn’t be a Yankee. The Yankees wouldn’t have re-signed him as a free agent. The only reason he is a Yankee is because of the $29.75 million owed.

5. As for Torres, I’m fine with him being a Yankee, but feel like he should no longer be a Yankee. If he remains a Yankee, so be it. If he’s traded, so be it. The 2018-19 version of Torres was a product of the juiced baseball and that version of him is never coming back. Torres might have been an above-average hitter last season, but that’s because the average hitter in baseball last season was essentially the Mets’ Luis Guillorme, who had a .691 OPS. There’s nothing I hate more than a low on-base percentage player and Torres posted a .310 OBP in 2022. Yes, he hit 24 home runs and had some big hits, but for a six-week period he had the lowest OPS in all of baseball. I think the Yankees would have been better off adding to their rotation by moving Torres, a rotation that is now in shambles.

6. Earlier this offseason, Boone said the 2023 rotation was the best he has had as Yankees manager. It wasn’t exactly going out on a limb, as some of the other rotations he has managed have had Sonny Gray, J.A. Happ and an opener. In theory and on paper, Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodon, Nestor Cortes, Luis Severino and Frankie Montas was the best rotation in the majors. But in theory and on paper is something that never pans out, at least not for the Yankees.

Cole and Cortes are now the only healthy names from that planned rotation and Cortes is coming off a groin injury that delayed his start to spring training. The rest of the rotation is now Clarke Schmidt, Domingo German and Jhony Brito. Darrell Rasner and Jeff Karstens aren’t far behind on the depth chart.

7. It turns out Rodon was dealing with the same elbow problem in the middle and at the end of last season and that didn’t stop the Yankees from signing him. We knew Montas was hurt a few weeks before the Yankees traded for him, but we didn’t know he became a Yankee still hurt and tried to pitch through a shoulder problem, and that didn’t stop the Yankees from trading for him.

It’s unfortunate, but not surprising that Severino is hurt. It’s now been five years since Severino has pitched a full, injury-free season and hearing that he has a “minor lat strain” isn’t exactly reassuring. He had a “minor lat strain” last season and missed two months. In 2019, a lat strain was part of the litany of injuries that caused him to not make his first start of the season until September. The Yankees are talking like Severino is going to miss one start. Knowing him and his injury history, specifically with lat injuries, I would sign up for him only missing April right now.

8. When Hal Steinbrenner was negotiating a new contract with Aaron Judge, he told Judge he could sign him and do more. After the Yankees signed Rodon, Steinbrenner said they weren’t done. They were done. The Yankees brought back the same offense minus Matt Carpenter and Andrew Benintendi and added Rodon. The Yankees chose not to upgrade the offense, not to add an everyday left fielder and to give two of 26 roster spots to Hicks and Donaldson. The supposed best rotation in baseball was going to make up for a yet-again-right-handed-heavy lineup. But now that rotation looks like a mid-2000s Yankees rotation held together by scotch tape, string and hope.

9. The Yankees will begin the season without 60 percent of their expected rotation, their starting center fielder and two important pieces of their bullpen in Tommy Kahnle and Lou Trivino. The Yankees ended last season without LeMahieu, Benintendi, Aaron Hicks, Michael King and Chad Green, and had Carpenter playing on a barely-healed broken foot. Had the ALCS gone past Game 4, Cortes wouldn’t have been able to start another game in the postseason. This after all the injuries of 2019, 2020 and 2021. Last week, Meredith Marakovits asked Hal Steinbrenner about all of the Yankees’ injuries over the last few years.

“We’re doing everything right,” Steinbrenner said. “We’re doing everything right. We believe that.”

It takes a special kind of person to see the injuries the Yankees have endured going on now five seasons and still think the organization is handling, diagnosing and rehabbing injuries the right way. In a results-driven business, the Yankees’ results in terms of injuries have been disastrous, and yet, the owner of the team isn’t worried by it. Maybe this is part of the “process is more important than results” bullshit Cashman was spewing at his end-of-the-season press conference. It’s an organization-wide belief and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to change.

10. I’m happy baseball is back even if the Yankees’ same issues from last season and the season before that and the season before that and the season before that still exist: the team is too right-handed heavy, too much of the core is still here and there are too many injuries.

Between now and Thursday at 1:05 p.m. I will talk myself into believing in this team and this roster like I do every year entering Opening Day because I have no other choice. For me, as a Yankees fan, I have to find a way to persuade myself into thinking this team can what the previous 13 iterations of the Yankees couldn’t. For the Yankees, as an organization, all they can do now is play the hand they dealt themselves.

Subscribe to the Keefe To The City Podcast.

My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!