MLB

Something Brewing

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The Milwaukee Brewers have sent the two-time defending World Series Champion Los Angeles Dodgers home for what may be a long winter after completing a four-game sweep in the NLCS last night in Dodger Stadium.

The Brewers now advance to their first World Series appearance in 44 years, their 1982 showing being the only one in their history. They have never won a World Series title.

The Brewers returned the favor as the Dodgers swept Milwaukee 4-0 in the 2025 NLCS. A series in which Shohei Ohtani displayed superhuman abilities on the mound and in the batter’s box. He pitched six scoreless innings in the clinching Game 4, allowing two hits and striking out 10, and went 5-for-14 at the plate in the series with three home runs and four RBIs — all three of those homers coming in that same Game 4, where he went 3-for-3. As otherworldly as that version of Ohtani was last fall, he was every bit as human in the rematch this year. Ohtani did finally bust out of a months-long home run slump with a three-run blast in the second inning. The typically demure Ohtani flipped his bat after cracking the homer, looked back toward his dugout and let out a cathartic release of emotion. Dealing with a knee injury had hampered his power and hitting ability, but he finally found his stroke. It appeared to be enough to get the Dodgers to the next game. But the Brew Crew fought all the way back. Jake Bauers cut the lead in half with a two-run double in the fourth. In the fifth, David Hamilton singled home a run and Bauers drew a bases-loaded walk to tie it. Garrett Mitchell led off the sixth with a solo shot off Tanner Scott to give Milwaukee its first lead of the night, and Hamilton tacked on an insurance homer off Edwin Díaz in the ninth.

The NLCS rematch sweep brings to mind a sports psychology concept that doesn’t make the stat sheet. When teams have been beaten, and often in heartbreaking or humiliating fashion, they seem to do quite well when given an opportunity for revenge in future years.

A few examples of this that come to mind beyond the 2025 & 2026 NLCS between Dodgers and Brewers are the National Championship games between Clemson and Alabama, the 2015 season ended with Bama slipping by Clemson, the next season saw Clemson return the favor with Deshaun Watson throwing a late touchdown to seal it for the Tigers.

The Philadelphia Eagles lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in the 2022 season’s Super Bowl, and then got their rematch two years later and absolutely decimated the Chiefs in that game, 40-22. It can happen when a team loses badly in a championship opportunity, as the Denver Broncos were lampooned by the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XLVIII, the only “cold weather” Super Bowl, having been played at MetLife Stadium. The game opened with the snap going past Peyton Manning’s head and into the end zone for a safety, things continued to go downhill from there, with the Seahawks running out to a 43-8 victory. Just a few years later, the Broncos were back in the Super Bowl, again with Peyton under center, and were underdogs against Cam Newton’s Panthers. They played like a team that knew the bitter taste of defeat and would do anything to avoid partaking in it once more, and snatched a 24-10 victory in Super Bowl 50 over Carolina.

Is there precedent for this to occur generationally? As the Seahawks and Patriots rematched 11 years after the famous Malcolm Butler goal line interception that snagged Tom Brady his fourth ring. Can this really play a factor that many years later when both rosters are completely turned over? Well, the Seahawks demolished the Patriots in this past February’s Super Bowl, perhaps it was the matchup, and maybe the organization had the mental edge after what had transpired more than a decade ago.

Sports psychology sidebar aside, the Brewers victory last night does something truly incredible, it leaves three teams in contention for the World Series, all of which are in the bottom half of the league in terms of payroll. Milwaukee ranks 19th, Tampa Bay 25th, and Cleveland dead last.

Commissioner Rob Manfred has dug his heels in for an impending labor fight this offseason that looks as contentious as any since the 1994 dispute cost the MLB a World Series. The majority of owners are determined to implement a cap and floor system. Their latest proposals have set those numbers at a $245.3 million cap and a $171.2 million floor. The MLB Players Association, their union, is staunchly opposed to this.

Thus far in the public negotiation posturing, neither side is speaking the same language, and a long, protracted work stoppage that costs the league significant games in the 2027 season appears inevitable.

Were the Dodgers to accomplish a threepeat this fall, the league would have a lopsided outcome to champion to their fans as proof positive that the current system is broken, and they must carry this fight through whatever collateral damage it brings with it to save the game.

Instead, we are going to get a World Series offering of Milwaukee and either Cleveland or Tampa Bay. Two franchises who have never won a World Series, and Cleveland who is in the league’s longest drought for a team who has lifted the trophy, the dry spell going all the way back to 1948.

Now sure, there are plenty of fans who regardless of the outcome of this World Series desperately want a salary cap and floor in place to allow small market teams to compete for titles on a more consistent and equitable basis, the way the NFL and NBA have allowed, should they acquire the right roster and coaching composition to do so.

I kind of like the idea that New York’s 11% top income tax rate and the rising cost of living within the city would make it even harder for the Yankees to put an end to their now franchise-record-tying 17-year World Series drought with a hard cap in place. But let’s not make this about what I want.

What I want to do is call MLB’s bluff.

Major League Baseball wants a salary cap, to increase competition, and to increase the franchise valuations of the small market clubs. But they have had their eyes on something else, and it directly conflicts with the salary cap push.

Rob Manfred has aligned the MLB media rights to end after the 2028 season. The MLB just watched the NBA sign new television/broadcast rights deals to the tune of $76 billion over 11 years. With Amazon Prime, ESPN, and NBC getting a slice of the pie at roughly 2.6 times the annual value of the last round of rights.

Manfred just had to maneuver media rights restructuring when ESPN dropped Sunday Night Baseball and their $550m a year annual obligation to it, he found a short term home for Sunday Night Baseball on NBC/Peacock, which included coverage of the wild card round, and then prevented losing the $550m a year from ESPN by handing them over the rights to MLB.TV, their out-of-market games package that is the best deal in sports streaming.

How does this tie into the labor fight?

MLB is looking to get a significant increase in media rights in 2029, but there’s a catch. If 60 or more games are lost in a season, the MLB would be paid their normal amount that year from their rights holders, but the contract would extend by a year, and the MLB would owe a discounted season of baseball to their rights holders for that extended year (essentially a free one if the whole season is wiped out).

“The networks might be pleased they’re receiving an extra year at a bargain rate.” — The Athletic

The lockout and the loss of games is MLB’s primary weapon to force the MLBPA to come to the table and negotiate, and accept aspects of their floor and cap system. Yet the MLBPA is aware of this 60 game clause. The players only need to survive two months without income, and the league will be scrambling to get them back on the field in order to fulfill their media rights obligations, and move toward the big money offers for 2029.

If I was Bruce Meyer, executive director of the MLBPA, I wouldn’t pick up the phone for Manfred until May 15th. He’ll be bending on his terms by then, I’d let him talk about their concessions.

Then I’d hang up and tell him to call back when he has a more serious offer.

We may lose a couple months’ worth of baseball next spring, but I can’t fathom how the league sees getting to the media rights negotiating table a year later and a year of current revenue shorter.

It would make sense for them to push for a new CBA that ends after the new media rights deals have been negotiated. Saving the cap fight for another day.

The new media rights may break the current model up and have games broken up across multiple streaming services, but allow for far more national exposure of the sport on a daily basis. This could bring in significantly more revenue that allows the league to make the idea of a cap and floor system even more palatable to the players, as it’s giving them a cut of a much larger pie.

My prediction, it will be a long ugly winter, but the boys will be playing ball by June.

Photo: Governor Tom Wolf / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 2.0

Yuckey Way

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The Boston Red Sox have been eliminated from postseason play after a humiliating two-game sweep at the hands of the New York Yankees. The Yankees took Game 1 by a score of 9-0 and Game 2 by 9-2. That’s an 18-2 aggregate, the most lopsided Wild Card Series since the current format arrived in 2022.

The Red Sox never had any momentum, beginning the series with 14 straight scoreless innings across the two games.

This Red Sox season never really felt right, and even during their incredible 32-5 run that saw them vault from the depths of the AL East to snatching a Wild Card spot, I was always waiting for the regression back to the mean.

It turns out the summer sizzle was in fact a dead cat bounce, as the Sox limped their way through a 12-12 September before getting bounced by their arch nemesis.

Interestingly enough, they never actually played any October baseball this year, with yesterday’s elimination game occurring on the 30th of September.

Let’s take a look at my mid season analysis of the team heading into the trade deadline:

The impact of the expanded postseason on the trade deadline can’t be understated. It is one of several factors that has rewritten how the midsummer major league musical chairs play out. With two additional Wild Card spots, significantly more teams are in contention this time of year than would have been before. My old friends, the Boston Red Sox, who have had a disastrous year by all accounts and expectations, sit just 2.5 games back from the third Wild Card spot. They sit at 43-48 today, a better record than the vibes and the Boston media coverage would indicate.

While they have found some momentum lately, including a recent sweep of the Yankees, they have no business considering themselves buyers at this deadline. But the slim possibility of a returning Crochet and Anthony, along with Craig Breslow’s desperation to save his general manager job, could have them thinking twice at the deadline three weeks from now.

The Red Sox need to sell; starting with Sonny Gray, Aroldis Chapman, and Jarren Duran. Restocking the cupboard that has borne less fruit than expected with the triumvirate of Roman Anthony, Marcelo Mayer, and Kristian Campbell — from varying degrees of disappointment to disaster — should be the priority. The faltering young core has them much further away from a championship window than it appeared just four months ago.

Breslow is also proof positive of the harm playing fast and loose at the trade deadline can do to a team. He gave up James Tibbs for two months of the herbivore Dustin May, and then, this past offseason, sent Kyle Harrison — one of the top left-handed pitching prospects in baseball, owner of a 2.82 ERA that has swelled a bit after a few recent rough starts, and the headline piece coming back in the Devers deal — to Milwaukee for Caleb “What is baseball?” Durbin. I think Caleb knows what baseball is, but he doesn’t often play like it.

To be fair, when the Caleb Durbin trade was made, I didn’t hate it. In hindsight, giving up such a young and capable arm in Kyle Harrison was a mistake, but the intention in getting younger and cheaper at third with a competent piece like Durbin after losing Bregman to Chicago made sense.

Now, John Henry’s unwillingness to kick in an extra $10m over 5 years to Bregman cost them both the veteran right-handed hitter, as well as Harrison, who went 11-5 with a 4.20 ERA across 110-plus innings for the Brewers this season.

That’s a far greater cost than they realized they would be paying, and an argument for cheaping out when you’re the third-most valuable franchise in baseball not being a winning strategy.

They probably did just good enough for Breslow to keep his job, and for John Henry to keep trying to poor-boy this team back into contention.

Talk about losing the battle, but (also) losing the war.

Photo: Bernard Gagnon / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 3.0

Outta Here

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Famous San Francisco Giants broadcasting duo has called their last game. Mike Krukow is stepping down after 37 years in the broadcast booth.

As we head into the baseball postseason, with an interesting slate of wild card series set to begin on Tuesday, it’s a good time to take a minute to say goodbye to one of baseball’s most iconic announcing teams.

Mike Krukow and Duane Kuiper called Giants games together for 36 seasons. Kruk went public with his inclusion body myositis diagnosis in 2014, stopped traveling east of Denver by 2017, and eventually came off the road entirely — calling road games from a studio in San Francisco via “splitcast” while Kuip worked on-site.

Sure, they were homers — famously getting emotional during a Giants losing skid last year was just one of many examples of that — but in Bay Area sports they were without a doubt an institution.

He was more than happy to toe the partisan San Francisco line when necessary, that included Covid, and lambasting players who refuted Pride Night.

They were fiercely defended by Giants fans, and when I would deride a friend about the commentary duo, he would get borderline apoplectic.

Whenever an established announcer leaves the game, we irreplaceably lose a piece of the era of baseball they were a part of.

I still mourn the loss of Boston Red Sox color man Jerry Remy, and the retirement of forty-two-year radio veteran Joe Castiglione. Neither the NESN nor the WEEI broadcasts are the same since their departure.

The Vin Scullys and the Bob Ueckers of the world come around once in a lifetime, there will be others to follow, and we may grow to love them as well, but they’ll always have the shadow of those that came before them to live up to.

Angel Investor in the Outfield

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The Los Angeles Angels fanbase has been set free.

“Arte Moreno has agreed to sell the team to billionaire Stan Kroenke.” — MLB Trade Rumors

Terms weren’t disclosed, but the LA Times reports the price clears the record $3.9 billion the Padres just sold for.

Arte’s disastrous run as owner of the Angels finally comes to an end. After years of “Sell the team!” chants, and fumbling having both Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani on the same team, in their prime, in the nation’s second largest media market with nary a postseason appearance. Not even a freaking Wild Card. They just concluded their 11th consecutive losing campaign. They haven’t played an October game since 2014 — eleven straight postseasons missed, the longest active drought in baseball. The Butcher of Anaheim has finally relinquished the reins.

Kroenke continues to build his sports empire. Kroenke Sports & Entertainment owns the Rams, the Denver Nuggets, the Colorado Avalanche, the Colorado Rapids, the Colorado Mammoth, and Arsenal — and now a controlling interest in the Angels, pending MLB approval, with the deal expected to close in the first quarter of 2027.

Kroenke has proven to be a very successful owner. Arsenal won the Premier League this past May, their first title in 22 years, and came a penalty shootout away from a Champions League double. The Nuggets won the NBA title in 2023. The Avalanche took the Stanley Cup in 2022, the Mammoth won the NLL Champion’s Cup that same year, and the Rams won Super Bowl LVI in February 2022. Five different leagues, five trophies, five years.

Also interesting that with the Dodgers potentially being up for sale in some capacity later this year, he opted for the Angels instead. Perhaps preferring outright ownership to being part of a group.

This brings up the question, is Stan Kroenke, with a net worth of $24.3 billion, in favor of a salary cap as an MLB owner?

Hey John Henry, your turn to cash in! #SellTheSox

Photo: Keith Allison (CC BY-SA 2.0)

A Loan at the Top

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The Dodgers empire may be coming apart at the seams.

“Prosecutors are investigating whether Walter’s businesses hid financial ties while borrowing billions from insurers he controls.” — Reuters

After the surprising sale of the Los Angeles Lakers last week, it now looks as though Mark Walter may need to divest himself of the Los Angeles Dodgers as well. The club says he has no plans to sell. He also had no plans to sell the Lakers ten months ago.

The situation is in the early stages, and there is serious bias in the coverage of it so far. I do remember a President of the United States who caught 34 felonies in New York, and then caught a separate half-billion dollar civil judgment for ‘inflating the value of his assets’ to get better terms on his loans — a farcical judgment an appeals court later threw out. Inflated collateral, concealed connections. Same neighborhood of accusations. The difference is that the Walter case appears to be actually substantive and not just politically motivated lawfare.

The Dodgers having to sell isn’t the biggest story. It’s the Guggenheim group’s stake in their TV rights deal that makes this very interesting. If this is true, and it ends up costing the Dodgers their $334 million annual local television revenue, it shakes up the hierarchy of Major League Baseball immediately.

Also interesting is that Shohei Ohtani has a clause in his contract that should GM Andrew Friedman leave the team, or the ownership group change, he can opt out of his contract the following offseason.

“Ohtani can opt out if Walter is no longer controlling owner or Friedman no longer runs baseball ops.” — ESPN

Los Angeles also owes north of a billion dollars in deferred salary money to players on the team after their contracts end. That may not be a huge issue now, but if revenues are shared more evenly in the future that could become a burden to the new owners.

This only serves to add fuel to the fire for owners who desperately want a salary cap this offseason in their labor dispute with the MLBPA.

Currently the smaller-revenue teams can coast on the league’s welfare check before they spend a dime from ticket sales or local TV. They’d like a bigger cut of the pie than they’re getting, and they’re willing to institute a salary floor to get the players on board. The new CBA only needs 23 of the league’s 30 owners to approve it. If enough of the smaller fish band together and force this issue, things get very interesting. This incident could take out the ownership of the biggest financial juggernaut in the sport before the deepest parts of the CBA battle come to pass. The owners don’t care as much about leveling the competition and competitive balance as they do increasing their franchise valuations. That’s exactly what a salary cap would provide for them.

Los Angeles achieving a three-peat this fall with another World Series title would be historic and impressive regardless of the payroll, but it may also be their last chance to do so in the league’s current framework.

With the players and owners speaking different languages in early stage CBA negotiations, this tectonic shift occuring right at this time feels like another reason we may not see baseball played in 2027. The dynamics may be in such a state a flux that a reconcilliation becomes even more difficult to arrive at.

Photo: Spatms — CC BY-SA 4.0

Veloci-rapture

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Paul Skenes’ pitch velocity has fallen off an absolute cliff in his third year in the Major Leagues.

Hall of Famer (in my book) Curt Schilling has weighed in on the regression on X:

Schilling’s issue is mechanical. Skenes’ arm drifts behind him toward third base instead of coming straight back, which strains everything from the shoulder down. He’s been calling Skenes a max-effort thrower since 2025 and said the delivery wouldn’t hold up under a starter’s workload. He also says he called this before the WBC.

The numbers back the alarm. Skenes threw 404 pitches at 99+ mph as a rookie in 2024. He threw 223 last season. This year he has thrown only three. You read that correctly, three pitches over 99 mph this year for Mr. Gas.

Theories range from being too fat, intentionally scaling back to save his arm for the big market teams (nonsensical, how would he get a big-money contract like this), or having his aura drained by his gymnast girlfriend. Also absurd, everyone in the show has a hot girlfriend, Skenes’ just happens to be the most visible.

Fat pitcher slander will not be tolerated on this platform. For one thing, Skenes isn’t actually fat. And if you think being fat as a pitcher means you won’t be successful, CC Sabathia, Bartolo Colon, David Wells, and George Herman Ruth would all like to have a word with you.

Personally, I’m inclined to agree more with Schilling’s analysis, along with the possibility of an undisclosed injury that is plaguing his current season.

On August 11 in Miami he was pulled after 65 pitches. His fastball averaged a career-low 95.7 and never touched 97. He got four whiffs on 34 swings, the worst rate of his career. Manager Don Kelly insisted it wasn’t injury-related. Though the denial doesn’t have me convinced.

Tim Lincecum’s body broke down after a few early dominant seasons, but Timmy the Kid did not have the powerful frame Skenes possesses.

Whatever the case may be, Skenes needs a significant reset to address the issue and protect his long term future in the league. It’s imperative he and the Pirates figure it out sooner than later, the franchise has three more years of contractual control for their ace, and Skenes has yet to even hit his arbitration money years. For a guy approaching his prime earning window, this becomes a potential $300m question for him.

Photo: Johnmaxmena2 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Evil Equity Empire

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George Steinbrenner famously said he wouldn’t sell the Yankees for anything, that “owning the Yankees is like owning the Mona Lisa. You don’t sell it.” It appears Apollo Sports Capital have finally cracked the da Vinci code.

The $2.6 billion from Apollo Sports Capital buys an undisclosed minority stake in Yankee Global Enterprises and refinances the franchise’s existing debt. Apollo Sports Capital CEO Al Tylis takes a newly created seat on the YGE board. Hal Steinbrenner and the Steinbrenner family retain full control, with Steinbrenner saying the partnership “allows us to explore pursuing strategic opportunities.”

—Sportico

Is this the Yankees finally capitulating to the Dodgers’ dominance and deciding the equitization route is the only way to level the playing field?

For all my grievances with the Yankees, I have respected that they have not been as willing to bend to modernity as the rest of the league. Abstaining from a City Connect uniform, and until recently holding to a rigid facial hair policy. But it looks like the times may have finally caught up with the Bronx Bombers.

What does this foreshadow about the likelihood of a salary cap being instituted, one the MLBPA has already said they will never accept?

Would the Yankees have still made this move if they truly thought a hard salary cap was a inevitable? A change expected to raise franchise valuations even higher.

Debt restructuring is one of the key reasons listed by New York for the move. Though the remaining debt on Yankee Stadium is reportedly under $100 million, which makes $2.6 billion an awfully large hammer for that particular nail. It could also signal Hal Steinbrenner is anticipating the top of the market is approaching, and is cashing out serious profits on what he views as an acceptable valuation of his franchise.

Most importantly, it could be the Yankees getting much needed liquidity to survive a long work stoppage that looms after the CBA ends on December 1st. If that is in fact their primary motivation, it’s another sign we could be in for a long and bloody battle between the owners and players over the next 18 months.

This sort of deal rescued FC Barcelona from falling behind, and it looks like the Yankees have it in mind to follow that blueprint. But whereas Barca sold a 25% stake in future media rights, the Yankees have sold a minority stake in Yankee Global Enterprises — not just the ballclub, but the holding company that also owns 26% of the YES Network, roughly 16% of Legends Hospitality, and 10% apiece of AC Milan and New York City FC. MLB rules cap a single private capital fund at 15% of a franchise, so there is a ceiling on how much of the Bronx is actually for sale.

On the other side of the rivalry, Red Sox ownership Fenway Sports Group is closing in on selling a minority stake in Liverpool FC to a consortium that includes Jeff Bezos. Fenway Sports Group have made enormous gains on their Liverpool acquisition — they bought the club for £300 million in October of 2010, and the reported deal values it at roughly £4.4 billion today, with the consortium’s one-third stake going for somewhere around £1.4 billion. I’d love to imagine John Henry is willing to sell the Red Sox, preferably in their entirety, as well.

The Yankees now have the capital to keep pace financially with the Mets and Dodgers, at least for a while. Those two franchises may also exhibit their new ceiling, and in the LOL Mets case, their new floor.

Photo: Matt Bolton / Wikimedia Commons — CC BY-SA 2.0

Trade Winds

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The 2026 Major League Baseball trade deadline has come to pass. There was a flurry of activity Monday afternoon that provided some surprising moves, none of which were exceedingly shocking.

The big news of the trade deadline actually broke late Saturday evening when it was announced that the Los Angeles Dodgers have come to terms on a trade with the Detroit Tigers to acquire ace lefty Tarik Skubal.

Skubal is the back-to-back reigning American League Cy Young winner, and the first reigning winner to be traded in-season since Justin Verlander in 2023 — only the sixth ever. He led all of baseball in WAR and strikeouts in 2024 and went a combined 31-10 with 469 punchouts across 2024 and 2025. There was talk he may not be traded at all this year after he had loose bodies removed from his elbow in May and was back on a mound 38 days later. The Dodgers are now the first team in league history to have a reigning two-time MVP and a reigning two-time Cy Young winner on the roster together in the same season.

Unlike most baseball fans, I was happy to hear the news. The most important reason for that is my hope was that he would not end up on the New York Yankees. The Yankees had a rather quiet deadline, but they did acquire Luis Garcia Jr. from the Nats, he leads the NL in slugging percentage. GM Brian Cashman seems to like his team’s chances should they get Judge, Stanton and Bellinger back healthy before the end of the season. 

Failing to acquire Skubal hasn’t cost the Yankees much in the way of championship odds with only a slight drop from +550 Sunday afternoon to +600 Tuesday afternoon.

I screencapped two sets of odds to track the movement on FanDuel, giving a wide enough birth from the deadline itself to still get a reasonable picture of the changes it brought: 

Sunday at 5 PM: 


Tuesday at Noon: 


The question that I have for the Yanks is— what would their odds currently be had they acquired Skubal?

What would the third most favored team, the Milwaukee Brewers (+950 odds) odds be if they’d acquired Skubal?

A key reason to ask, is that the Dodgers didn’t give up a whole helluva lot to get the superstar pitcher — outfielder Zyhir Hope, the No. 5 prospect in their system and No. 25 in all of baseball, right-hander River Ryan at No. 7 in the system and No. 68 overall, and right-hander Brady Smith at No. 17, per MLB Pipeline. Los Angeles managed to hold onto their top four prospects and still get a nuclear arm added to their arsenal. 

The Dodgers sit at an unprecedented +155 to win the World Series in early August. That speaks to the incredible team they have constructed, and also the weaknesses of the rest of the field.

A three-peat would give them the first one since 1998-2000, when the Yankees pulled it off, it would also elevate the cries of the Salary Cap hungry owners and the majority of MLB fans who support such a measure.

Seeing a cap and floor model in the vein of the NFL would give fans a sense that any team could win it all. Just don’t tell that to Cleveland Browns fans, hell, don’t even mention it to Bills fans. Teams that scout, draft, recruit, sign, develop and take care of their players will still have an enormous advantage, and those in low-tax, high-revenue, nice-to-live locations will have built in advantages that will become more stark in a hard capped league. 

Point being, don’t expect a salary cap to fix all your franchises woes overnight, but I do understand the appeal and would love to see what America’s pastime looked like with a more level playing field.

Other noteworthy items from the deadline:

The Boston Red Sox basically dumped one of the members of their golden age of prospects they’ve been championing for the last several years. The oft-injured Marcelo Mayer never found his groove in the big leagues, and made more headlines for his attitude and alleged off-the-diamond issues. Word is the organization felt he was detrimental to the prospect they just locked up for nine-figures last summer in Roman Anthony. Mayer was said to be a regular fixture of the New England late night scene (according to 98.5 The Sports Hub of Boston), which fed into questions about his motivations and maturity. He was shipped to the San Francisco Giants for lefty reliever Erik Miller and minor-league outfielder Carlos Gutierrez.

The Red Sox also paid a pretty heavy price to nab Adley Rutschman from the Baltimore Orioles. The switch hitting catcher is currently injured, but could provide a valuable dynamic to the Red Sox lineup heading into the final stretch of the season, and the postseason should they land a spot. I quipped that the Red Sox are now going after players who are “pre-injured”, as another key acquisition before the deadline was Curtis Mead, the former Nationals second-baseman who has some serious pop in his bat right now and could provide much needed defensive stability to the Red Sox middle infield, was injured in his first game with the Sox. A pitch struck and broke his wrist. He now heads to the infirmary with ace Garrett Crochet, who hasn’t pitched since April 25 and still hasn’t picked up a baseball after shoulder inflammation turned into a lat strain, Roman Anthony, out since May 5 with a torn ligament in his hand and no timetable, shortstop Trevor Story, on the 60-day list since sports hernia surgery in late May and only now aiming at a rehab assignment. Rutschman officially begins his Boston tenure on the 10-day list with left wrist inflammation. Which when you compare it to the medical report I just got done delivering, is actually pretty healthy! 

Boston moved from +3500 odds on July 13, to +1800 on Sunday afternoon, climbing as high as +1500 after the acquisition of Rutschman before settling to their current line at +1600. Still a dark horse by those odds, but third behind division rivals Tampa and New York in American League team odds to win it all.

The Atlanta Braves were quiet at the deadline, their odds have dropped slightly as a result. But Chris Sale did win July’s NL Pitcher of the month, and the Bravos still have big October aspirations.

My recent article, The Dead Tradeline, discussed how the expanded Wild Card slots (and the longstanding inability to trade future draft picks) makes for less excitement at the trade deadline. Far more teams being “buyers” now than sellers limits the amount of top end players who are available to be moved, and not trading future picks limits the amount of resources teams have to acquire them. I discussed how the Red Sox could greatly benefit by being deadline sellers, but their improbable win streak, and Breslow’s desire to save his General Manager job, had made that highly unlikely. The Red Hot Sox haven’t slowed down yet, having just completed a sweep of the Dodgers this past weekend, placing them at a mind-blowing 28-5 since June 24. 

The last few weeks have felt like a holding pattern as we waited for the deadline to come and lock in the rosters. Now that we’ve seen its fruits come to bear, the headline that remains: the rich get richer in LA, the Yankees don’t make major waves, and the odds of a serious labor stoppage that puts the 2027 season at risk have grown ever higher as the owners will seek to use the Dodger’s success as the smoking gun that demands a salary cap at all costs. 

So enjoy this postseason run, it may be the last one we get for a while.

Back to the Futures

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A guy who opens his sports betting app every day, even multiple times a day, sounds like a guy with a real problem. But what if that guy rarely ever places a bet? What if the guy I’m talking about is me?

I treat my FanDuel account not like a digital casino in my pocket, I treat it like I would my stocks app. It turns sports into an easily readable market index.

My favorite things to check in on are Futures markets. Primarily they tell you what a team’s current odds are to win the championship, make the championship game, win their division, etc. They don’t focus on the pointspread of the next game, they assess the odds of a future event, hence the name.

One myth I see stated often in sports media is that “Vegas thinks they’re the favorite”, or that “Vegas is giving them 7 points.” While the sportsbooks themselves set the initial line based on their own in-house oddsmaker’s analysis, that line is fluid, it moves as money is placed, shifting the odds towards the money. The sportsbooks ideally want to be in the middle, where the “vig”, the cost of the action that lies in the disparity of the odds, is where they make their money. Sportsbooks can get into danger when enormous amounts of public money are on someone who is, for example, a heavy underdog, and there is no money on the other side of the bet to offset the losses if the heavily bet side wins. This causes conspiracy theories (and I’m always willing to listen to those with an open mind) to circulate when the house ends up winning anyways, but it also shows what the goal of the bet taker is, to come out ahead no matter who wins or loses, and that means moving the line to whatever is most likely going to do that.

While you might think it’s just Johnny Casual placing all these bets and they don’t reflect data driven analysis of what is most probable to occur, the homer or the casual fan bets are called “public money”, there are sports betting syndicates and professional sports bettors who bring in significant capital and move lines when they see a disconnect between their view of what the line should be and what the odds currently listed are, they’re known as the “sharps”, and they bring in the “smart money.”

Betting syndicates employ data analysts with weaponized autism that make Rain Man look like Forrest Gump. And now when you add AI models to assist these savants you get some high level hedging happening across the sports markets.

So when I pop open my sports betting app and check out the futures, I’m looking at ticker prices like investments, mathematically deduced probabilities that bring public and smart money together to give you a sense of the likelihood of a given scenario happening, like the Dodgers winning their third consecutive World Series. This allows me to treat Futures as a more scientific version of Power Rankings.

Right now the Dodgers sit at +190, the plus minus odds look funny at first glance, but here’s what they mean in plain English. If it’s a +, it means if you bet $100 you win back your stake as well as the amount after the +. Right now, bet $100 on the Dodgers, and if they win it all, you win $190, and your $100 stake, for a payout when you cash your ticket in of $290.


If it’s minus, it’s just turned around, if a favorite is -200, a $200 bet wins you $100, for a $300 total payout. The payouts are adjust for each wager amount to the correlating ratio.

In the markets you have to be aware of and account for certain levels of bias. If you’re in Las Vegas and you’re betting on the Dodgers, be aware that due to the proximity of the massive LA metro area to Vegas, that the Dodgers are often overbet by Dodgers fans who come to Vegas and take the boys in blue no matter what the line is. The sportsbooks don’t always change the lines fast enough to correct these numbers entirely (but with automated market makers this has changed significantly) and this is where the sharps like to pounce, it’s a reason they often wait until just before a game starts, until all the public money has come in, to lay massive wagers on an inflated line to get an edge. This is why you often see significant line movement before kickoff, right before a fight begins, and so on.

In my article last week, Dead Sox Come to Life, I discussed how the Boston Red Sox odds were at 35/1, or written in +/- style, +3500. As we see today in the above image, those odds have shifted to +2500, 25/1. The betting market has priced in the Red Sox 14 game win streak, now one win shy of the franchise record set by the 1946 club, and the odds of them winning the World Series have increased as more money has come in on Boston.

The Futures are a way to cut through the noise of the talking heads in the media and look at what the money is saying is going to happen, backed by some serious data analysis. The money says the most likely outcome is a Dodgers and Yankees World Series rematch. With the Dodgers having the edge in the potential matchup. But there’s a reason they play the games, the magic of sports is how often the unlikely actually occurs.

We’ll check in on where the odds have shifted after the trade deadline, and see who has done the most to best position their team for a run through October.

The Magic is Gone

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I watched the first three innings of the All-Star Game last night and felt nothing. No Ohtani, Skenes not starting for the National League, Skubal not starting for the American League. It felt more like a best-stats-so-far-this-year and most-fan-votes game than an All-star game.

Sure, if I was in Philadelphia and found a last-minute ticket for around a hundred bucks, I’d go check it out. A chance to be at an All-Star Game is historic, and getting to see all these players, many of whom will be future Hall of Famers, together would be surreal. But as a spectator watching on TV, what exactly am I looking at?

I’m watching a game that has no bearing on the division races or playoff picture. My main concern is that the players I like don’t get injured, and I felt for Rays fans who had to watch Junior Caminero get hit in the hand by a 97-mph sinker. After the game, Cardinals pitcher Riley O’Brien apologized, saying, “I definitely wasn’t trying to do that. It got away from me.” Caminero took it in stride, saying, “We’re here to have fun. We’re here to enjoy the night.” I understand that, but as a fan, it wasn’t easy to do as a television viewer.

The All-Star Game has long had a problem with the relevance issue, and they errantly tried to correct it for years by awarding home-field advantage in the Fall Classic to the winner. It did give the game stakes that made it more interesting, but it was in no way fair to the teams that would meet in the World Series at the end of the year.

Every single out and every single at-bat in a baseball game has meaning. It all becomes a part of your permanent record, your career statistics, and how that measures up against others across time. No matter how mundane the play, you know that you’re watching a small piece of history. 

I think of, weirdly enough, a blockchain. And no, don’t worry, I’m not a Bitcoin maximalist who’s about to go on a diatribe about how it’s the future and everything is Bitcoin. I’m definitely not that guy.

But blockchain technology is layers and layers of code placed together that become something unique, part of this massive catalogue that comprises how the technology works. Each play in baseball is, in essence, a line of code in the history of America’s pastime.

What was on last night has no bearing on that, and it’s one of the reasons it couldn’t hold my interest for more than a few innings. I prefer to treat the All-Star break like the players who didn’t get selected, as a brief four-day reprieve from a long and grueling season to dabble in my other interests. 

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