Here we at the end of month three of the 2009 Major League Baseball season with about 75 games played and 87 to go. There’s been some movement, drift and milestones In the American League as the West is in flux, the Central is looking a tad odd and the East looks like it can change at any moment. Let’s take a quick look at each division.
I want to look at tonight’s NBA Draft a bit, but first a couple of quick stories to touch on:
Day one of the post-Manny world was rocky for his Dodgers. The good news was that they scored nine runs. The bad news was that that was only against the lowly Nationals, and it wasn’t enough runs to win. There’s not much in that game that can be blamed on the loss of Manny directly, and we didn’t learn that much, but losing to the Nats is never a good thing.
Baseball season win totals have started popping up on sports books over the last couple of days. As I have said before, these are by far the most interesting of the season long props in my mind. Today I want to take a look at the American League for value opportunities, and I’ll follow up by looking at the National League tomorrow:
Cleveland Indians – 85.5 – I’d certainly jump on the under here. I don’t trust their rotation, I don’t love their depth, and frankly I have been burned by this organization before. They are a contender in the AL Central, but it is a weak division this year. I don’t think that they will go under by a lot, but I think they will go under.
Justine Henin retired suddenly yesterday despite the fact that she was number one in the world rankings. A couple of things arise from that. First, it’s sad where we have gotten to as a society of sports watchers – an athletes leaves suddenly and I can’t help but wonder what she was about to be caught doing. That’s probably not the case here, but we can’t help but wonder. Second, there goes one of the easiest bets in tennis. She had won three straight French Opens. The tournament starts in a couple of weeks. She hasn’t been playing well lately, but she still would have been an automatic bet for a few rounds.
I know that I spend more time talking about the AL Central than anything else in baseball, but it is just so darned fascinating that you can’t look away – it’s like simultaneous car crashes. I was just about to sit down and right a comment of some sort about how the Tigers were finally showing some signs of life – they had won three straight after all, and their offense was hitting on all cylinders. I was also going to throw in a comment about how troubled Cleveland was – they were supposed to be neck and neck with Detroit, and they were, but it wasn’t supposed to be at 5-10. I had been busy all day, and I hadn’t checked out the scores all day, so I took a quick look before making my comments. So much for that article. After Detroit blew away the Indians 13-2 yesterday, they are now trailing Cleveland 11-1 in the 8th.
