May 25th Recap
May 25th Record: 2-1, +1u
*MLB Winner(+1u): Mets -1.5(-105) vs Rockies
--Because the Colorado Rockies are heavily aided by a hitter-friendly ballpark, it is usually smart to look to fade them when they are on the road. That’s even more true considering how poor their roster is this season and the fact that they matched up with the best pitcher in baseball(DeGrom) tonight. DeGrom’s issues with getting run support has been well chronicled, and once again the Mets offense sputtered for him tonight. Luckily, Tomas Nido’s 2 run shot in the 6th was just enough for the Mets to skate by with a 3-1 win. The Mets’ offensive inconsistency will usually keep me off of laying runs with them, but DeGrom’s excellence combined with Colorado’s inadequacy made tonight a special circumstance for this play. It’s never easy with this team, but NYM ultimately got the job done.
*MLB Loser(-1u): Cardinals/White Sox F5 UNDER 4(+100)
--With Jack Flaherty and Lucas Giolito toeing the rubber tonight, I envisioned a playoff-like game where runs would be at a premium. Right on cue, the White Sox jumped out to a 7-2 lead after 5 innings. This was a dead dog loser, so I won’t try to act like I got robbed of a win here, but I must say that it is frustrating when errors are the demise of your bet. The Cardinals made three errors with Flaherty on the mound, including a Tommy Edman dropped fly ball with 2 outs(runner scored) and a Nolan Arenado booted ball on a routine grounder. Of the 7 runs Flaherty gave up, just 3 were earned. That said, I’ll admit that maybe the Flaherty-Giolito matchup was a bit overhyped. The two played high school baseball at Harvard-Westlake(CA) together, and each have had their fair share of success at the big-league level. But in reality, neither is quite in the upper-echelon of SP’s quite yet.
*NBA Best Bet Winner(+1u): Lakers ML(-130) @ Suns
--Did anybody really think LeBron would let the Lakers go down 2-0 in this series? While the Lakers looked bad in Game 1, the Suns caught the Lakers right as LAL was coming off the play-in tournament win over Golden State, and Phoenix chose to max out to get ahead in this series. For reference, Devin Booker played 45(!) minutes in Game 1. Anthony Davis got manhandled by Deandre Ayton in that opening series loss, and it was apparent in his postgame remarks that he wouldn’t let that happen again. While the Suns fought back in the second half, the Lakers had complete control of this game from start to finish. AD finished with 34 on the night, and LeBron stepped up with some clutch fade-aways in the 4th quarter. Dennis Schroder’s return from COVID also can’t be understated as this series moves forward; he looked as good as he has in a while, finishing with 24 points. I’ll be interested to see how the rest of this series goes, but either way, we can agree that tonight’s result shouldn’t have been a surprise to anybody.