Betting news, trends, odds and predictions from various handicappers and websites for Sunday 6/23/19
Armadillo: Sunday's List of 13: Clearing out a cluttered mind…….
13) UConn is expected to leave the AAC and go back to the Big East for the 2020-21 season; not sure what this does to their football program, since the Big East isn’t a football league.
Huskies have made the NCAA basketball tournament only once in the last five years.
UConn leaving the AAC raises the question: who replaces the Huskies in the AAC?
12) NHL does their draft better than any other league; the whole league is under one roof, all the coaches/GM’s, and they move the draft around North America every year- they did that before the NFL started doing it.
Philadelphia Flyers drafted a kid who went to Florida on a golf scholarship, then thought better of it and transferred to Minnesota, where he walked on to the hockey team. Not a lot of guys in the NHL went to college on a golf scholarship.
11) San Francisco Giants are thinking about taking their bullpens off the field and putting them under the stands in right-center field, which would mean the fences in “Triples Alley” would have to come in, making the dimensions much more hitter-friendly.
10) Twice in the last week, Cardinals’ pitcher John Flaherty was used as a pinch-runner in the last inning; one time he was thrown out at the plate to end the game, Thursday he got picked off second to end the game. His pinch-running career might be over.
9) Former Angels’ OF Tim Salmon has the most home runs (299) by anyone who never made an All-Star team.
8) Talked last week about the Angels DFA’ing OF Carlos Puello; he quickly found a home with the Miami Marlins, where he is now their rightfielder.
7) Baseball stuff:
— Indians put P Mike Clevinger (ankle) on IL.
— MLB suspended Texas 3B Asdrubel Cabrera for four games.
— MLB suspended Oakland P Frankie Montas for 80 games (PEDs)
6) New York Daily News was not invited to a Friday press conference for Knicks’ draft picks RJ Barrett and Ignas Brazdeikis, but every other NYC outlet covering the team was. Owner James Dolan doesn’t like the paper’s coverage and has effectively banned them from covering the team.
Dolan is one of the worst owners in sports, if not the worst.
5) In his last three starts, Jacob deGrom threw 112-116-113 pitches, which is indicative of teams starting to stretch their better starting pitchers out a little more.
Stats show that with relievers pitching more and more innings, their ERA’s are going higher and higher, so this is the result of that.
4) Yu Darvish didn’t get a decision in any of his last ten starts, which ties a big league record that was last done in 1977 (Lerch, D’Acquisto), and has only been done four times ever.
3) Michigan-Vanderbilt will play a best-of-3 series for the College World Series title starting Monday.
2) Dodgers 5, Rockies 4— Alex Verdugo hit a walk-off homer for LA- they walked off Colorado Friday night, too.
1) If the baseball playoffs started today…….
NL: Atlanta-Chicago-Los Angeles. Wild Cards: Cardinals @ Brewers
AL: New York-Minnesota-Houston. Wild Cards: Bos/Clev @ Rays