Tuesday's List of 13: Nobody asked me, but……..

Tuesday's List of 13: Nobody asked me, but……..

13) Houston Astros were -$419 favorites over Seattle Sunday, making them the 4th-highest priced favorite in any baseball game since 2005:
-$485 Dodgers vs Atlanta, 2016 (W4-0)
-$435 Twins vs Washington, 2007 (L1-3)
-$434 Indians vs Detroit, 2017 (W2-0)
-$419 Astros vs Seattle, 2019 (W3-1)

12) Aaron Sanchez was 0-13, 7.71 in his last 17 starts for Toronto, so of course he goes to the Astros and throws six no-hit innings in his first start for Houston.

11) At SouthPoint Casino in Las Vegas, you can bet on the over/under of combined losses for Clemson/Alabama’s football teams this season:

1.5 losses, over -$130, under +$110

10) Trevor Story is third player ever to homer five games in a row against the Giants, the other two being Rogers Hornsby (1922) and Mike Schmidt (1979).

9) Detroit Tigers lost P Matthew Boyd’s last five starts, last three in extra innings.

8) Big Ten Network posted a picture on Twitter Monday of football practice at Indiana, where the kid holding for kicks holds the ball in place with his nose instead of his finger, and then the left-footed kicker kicks the ball.

This is a very bad idea, though it did show that the holder has a lot of faith in the kicker.

Kids, do NOT try this at home.

7) Baseball stuff:
— Cubs put C Willson Contreras (hamstring) on the IL.
— Angels put SS Andrelton Simmons, P’s Felix Pena, Griffin Canning on the IL.
— Phillies optioned 3B Mikael Franco to AAA.
— Washington put Howie Kendrick, Roenis Elias on the IL.
— Bronx put OF Aaron Hicks (flexor strain) on the IL.
— Reds claimed P Kevin Gausman off waivers from Atlanta.

6) Not sure what criteria baseball teams use to promote their minor league prospects; Braves promoted their three best guys at AA Mississippi to AAA Gwinnett this week, but one of them, Drew Waters, was mired in a 2-for-35 slump when he was promoted.

Makes you wonder if there was a problem with the coaching staff at Mississippi.

5) Tom Brady signed a 2-year contract extension that pays him $23M a year, and makes him the 6th-highest paid QB in the NFL (he had been #20).

As competitive as Brady is, it is hard to fathom that he isn’t somehow getting extra under the table to circumvent the salary cap. Brady has won six Super Bowls; you think he’d be OK with being the 20th highest-paid QB in the NFL?

4) College basketball transfer portal:
— Stetson transfer Abayomi Iyiola bolts to Arkansas.

3) Golfer JT Poston won the Wyndham PGA event this weekend; he is the first golfer since Lee Trevino in 1974 to play a 72-hole PGA event without any bogeys.

2) RIP to longtime NFL writer Don Banks, 56, who passed away in Ohio Saturday; I met him when the Giants used to have training camp here in Albany. We met at a dinner- he was a nationally known writer and I was just there because my friend is a writer, but Don was as nice as he could be to me- we talked about football throughout dinner.

He had recently been hired by the Las Vegas newspaper to cover the NFL. Very sad. RIP, sir.

1) Euroleague basketball import D.J. Cooper, a 6-0 guard, was suspended by FIBA for fraud after a drug test declared him to be pregnant; turns out he had submitted his girlfriend’s urine, and she was probably unaware that she was pregnant. Oy.

Cooper has been playing pro ball overseas since he graduated from Ohio U in 2013. Not sure what he majored in, but I’m guessing it wasn’t Biology.