The Avalanche won the Stanley Cup last night, capping a season that goes down as one of the most successful in NHL history. It was a fitting final game, tense and close the whole way through, Colorado’s backs not fully against the wall but things looking pretty close to that after the Lightning took the 1-0 lead early in the first period.
In the end, playing the two-time defending champions on the road in Game 6, the Avs didn’t blink. Now, they get to head into an offseason full of both celebration and preparation. Others can tell you more about their summer checklist. We want to talk about Denver.
If you were tasked with a city fairly representative of American cities as a whole, Denver might be your choice. It’s large, but it’s not massive. It’s got a local identity, but it’s full of a lot of transplants. It’s got all the major sports, but none of its franchises are particularly dominant.
Both the Avalanche and the Broncos were, at two points in recent memory, among the dominant powers in their sport. The Broncos won back-to-back Super Bowls in the 90’s, then went on a five-year division title streak early in the 2010’s. The Avalanche had that classic rivalry with the Red Wings late in the 90’s and are now on a four-year streak of winning at least one playoff series. The Rockies and Nuggets have little to show in the realm of banners, but neither has gone horrifically long between stretches of being highly competitive, with both good in the latter half of each of these last two decades.
Denver is firmly a professional-sports city. The Buffs aren’t dominating the conversation over there like the Dawgs are in half of Atlanta. It’s not a great professional-sports city in terms of success—it can’t compare to Boston or Los Angeles, but it also isn’t a suffering one—it’s not the Twin Cities or pre-2008 Philadelphia. Where does it fit in the landscape? Somewhere comfortably in the middle. Somewhere that makes you feel just about nothing when you think, “Denver sports.”
On the Topic of Hockey
Our Gelo post-mortem is as follows:
It was fine.
Really, that’s about all we have to say. It worked pretty smoothly. We lost money using it for our futures portfolio, but we didn’t lose an unprecedented amount (27% loss on our initial investment). We also lost money on daily picks, but not a lot (7.56 units), and there were some great stretches, which is basically all you can ask of a model like Gelo, especially one as simplistic as Gelo itself is.
We’ll plan to do more robust backtesting this offseason, and we’ll tinker again with the variables impacting how quickly and dramatically Gelo reacts. We may tinker with how aggressive we allow it to be in reacting to hypothetical results in its long-run simulations. We may look into playoff home-ice advantage, the impact of playing games on back-to-back days, the impact of empty-net goals, and other things of this nature. Overall, though, it’s a fine model for our purposes right now, and it’s fairly low on our priority list at the moment. It did its job, and we’re cautiously excited to let it run over a full season next year, instead of just over the postseason.
On the betting side, we do find ourselves in a big hole, now 210.63 units away from a return to profitability. What got us so deep? An unexpectedly bad college basketball season and too many units spent on experimental bets. Our bread and butter, MLB futures, goes on, though, and we do expect it to dig us out of the hole completely. A 21% return on the portfolio? We’ve exceeded that by a lot in two of the last three years, and this portfolio is our most robust of all time by a wide margin. In the meantime, we’ll continue with the motorsports bets (lost our NASCAR play yesterday, but our pick—Denny Hamlin—was again in the picture), and we’ll continue with our behind-the-scenes experimentation to see if we can find an angle for baseball moneylines, run lines, or totals. If we don’t, though, it’s just MLB futures and motorsports until college football season starts.
The Cubs Did Some Winning
The Cubs took two of three from the Cardinals over the weekend, and even the one they lost featured a late comeback to tie things up. The pitching staff is concerningly thin, but Kyle Hendricks was Good Kyle Hendricks on Friday, Adrian Sampson was enticing on Saturday, and there’s enough beef in the bullpen to bring in a good haul of prospects in a month. Will the trade deadline be sad? Yes, I think so. Ian Happ had a quiet weekend, but his year’s been good enough that he may be playing his way out of Chicago, by overperforming expectations so dramatically that someone may now value him for the rest of this year and all of next more highly than the Cubs do. Willson Contreras sounds likely to be gone, and while I personally will hold out hope for an offseason signing to bring him back, I don’t know that it’s realistic. Plenty to look into over the weeks ahead as Major League Baseball’s share of the sports attention market peaks.
I’m sad about Alec Mills’s performance since returning from the IL. He wasn’t outstanding last year, but he was a very good back-of-the-rotation starter, and he seems to have lost that. Looking more like Mike Montgomery than the Alec Mills of 2020 and 2021.
Rafael Ortega’s recent surge has been great. Earlier in the year, I thought playing him made less sense than playing Jason Heyward. He’s proven me wrong on that, and I hope someone’s willing to buy high but if he can keep hitting like he’s been hitting, it would be a good thing to have that bat around. Players playing well is, no matter how you slice it, a good thing.
In other Cubs bits:
- Seiya Suzuki’s getting closer to a rehab assignment. Sounds like that could start by the end of the week, if I’m understanding reports correctly.
- Marcus Stroman is also getting closer to a rehab outing. Doesn’t sound like it’ll be this week, but maybe next?
- Heyward is reportedly battling a small problem with his knee, and in the questioning about that and Heyward in general, Jed Hoyer and David Ross have each said something interesting about the outfielder. Hoyer banged the drum rather loudly about his skill at helping develop young players. Ross talked about loyalty to Heyward. These are both things that have an obvious response, but the obvious response to each of them seems, to me at least, kind of dumb. “Do you have to play the guy for him to help develop young players?” I don’t know, man. Is Jason Heyward a human being, or is he a development-assisting-veteran robot? If he’s helping develop guys, keep him happy enough. It’s not like he’s playing every single day, or not getting pinch-hit for, or that kind of thing. “LOYALTY?!” What helped the Cubs sign Seiya Suzuki, pal? It was the franchise having a great reputation among free agents. Obviously, there are complaints about the lack of aggression in free agency right now, but all accounts still indicate that Wrigley Field is one of the most desired destinations for free agents in baseball, and I’d imagine things like the loyalty to Jason Heyward can’t hurt with that. At the end of the day with Heyward, we’re always talking about marginal differences in value between him and guys who maybe will turn into a serviceable fourth outfielder. He isn’t landing Happ or Suzuki on the bench (and if that happens, and happens regularly, yeah let’s talk about it again).
Around baseball:
- Bryce Harper broke this thumb on a hit by pitch, and I haven’t seen exactly how long he’ll be out but it doesn’t sound likely to be a short absence.
- The Angels and Mariners had a big fight, and we haven’t heard the suspension fallout yet but the video is making the rounds, if you like baseball fight videos.
- Ronald Acuña didn’t break his foot, but he hurt his foot on a foul ball, and he might land on the IL for a stint.
- Brandon Crawford’s going on the IL with knee inflammation after a rough slide into home on Tuesday. He has not been what he was in 2021, but 2021 isn’t too far in the rearview and the Giants are trying to stay alive in what’s currently a competitive National League.
- The Dodgers have lost Daniel Hudson for the year. ACL tear. Might this drive up the price for relief pitching? Yes. Everything drives up the price for relief pitching.
- The Mariners have acquired Carlos Santana from the Royals in exchange for a pair of minor-league pitchers. The pitchers are both decent—they at least showed up on FanGraphs’s most recent list of top Mariners prospects, which goes deep but not all the way down the farm system—but Santana’s a solid hitter (great at getting on base) who’s been smoking the ball (.359 xwOBA, .315 wOBA). If the Mariners can’t get back into the Wild Card picture in the next month, they can flip him for different minor league pitchers. Those might not be as good as the two they traded, but they’re willing to pay the price to try, which is a good idea this time of year (especially with Ty France going on the IL with a flexor strain after a weird collision at first base).
- The Mets got James McCann back from the IL, and may very soon get Max Scherzer back as well. It’s decision time for the Mets a bit at catcher, with the trade deadline looming and that a weak spot if McCann doesn’t work out. Jacob deGrom continues to throw, which is all you can hope for if you’re a Mets fan right now, I suppose.
- Hunter Renfroe’s going on the IL for the Brewers with a calf strain. He’s been among Milwaukee’s best hitters. Elsewhere in the NL Central war of attrition, Jack Flaherty and Harrison Bader are both going on the IL. Flaherty strained his shoulder, leaving yesterday’s start early. Bader’s dealing with plantar fasciitis. Steven Matz is back throwing again, but he wasn’t exactly doing great before his injury, and Yadier Molina—somewhat relatedly, given his importance to the St. Louis pitching effort—isn’t terribly close to a return.
- The Rays got Wander Franco back, in a welcome reversal of the current trend where everyone on that team is getting hurt.
- The White Sox are getting Yoán Moncada back from the IL, and Liam Hendriks might not be far behind. They’re close to having to sell. Not there yet—could easily be buyers, and are currently firmly on the buyer side—but they need to start winning and they need both of the Twins and Guardians to do at least a little concurrent losing.
- Seranthony Dominguez is back from Tommy John surgery, and he won’t make up for Bryce Harper’s absence, but the Phillies are still very much in this race. Just a game back of the Giants right now. Just a game and a half back of the Cardinals.
- The Twins put Trevor Larnach on the IL, where he’ll underdog surgery on his core and miss six weeks, further straining an outfield stretched thin by, among other things, the Byron Buxton knee injury they’re load-managing.
- Nate Pearson’s absence—this time due to mononucleosis—is going to be longer for the Blue Jays. He’s been shut down again with a lat strain.
- The Phillies have called up Mark Appel, the 2013 first overall pick who still is yet to make his MLB debut. He’s got a 3.87 FIP over 28 innings across 19 outings at AAA this year, with five saves to show for his work. Not what his career was designed to be, but a bullpen role on a playoff chaser? That sounds pretty great to me.
On the field:
- The Astros threw a combined no-hitter against the Yankees on Saturday, then started yesterday’s game with six more no-hit innings. In the end, the Yankees came back to salvage a split, but it was a rough fifteen innings in the Bronx. Or a great fifteen innings. Depends on your point of view.
- On the NL side, the Dodgers took two of three in Freddie Freeman’s return to Atlanta, with Freeman’s own double in the tenth last night giving the Dodgers a brief lead before they won it in the eleventh. After a recent swoon, the Dodgers are back two games ahead of the Padres, and they’re up four in the loss column.
- The Guardians had been hot, but the Red Sox are hotter. A sweep in Cleveland left the hosts two back of the Twins and the visitors eleven back of the Yankees, but at least up to second place.
- The Brewers got right a little bit, winning on Saturday and Sunday to climb a game ahead of the Cardinals and push the Blue Jays down to even with the Rays for third in the AL East and fifth in the AL playoff standings.
- Speaking of the Rays, Isaac Paredes—one of those classic Rays early-season trade acquisitions—went six for eight over the weekend and is now eleven for his last 19, sporting a five-game hitting streak highlighted by five home runs. His xwOBA’s still below average, but he’s getting results. The poor Tigers. Maybe you just shouldn’t trade with Tampa Bay.
How Good Are Superteams?
Kyrie Irving is reportedly coming back to Brooklyn for another run with Kevin Durant, and…will it work any better? They should have a better regular season, of course, but this is not a superteam which inspires terror, like the LeBron/Wade/Bosh Heat or the Durant Warriors. The Nets were somewhere around 7-to-1 to win the title entering today, trailing the Warriors, Celtics, and Bucks. They might pass one or more of those teams with this news, but still—that’s a top group that doesn’t exactly jive with the superstar-controlled approach to the modern NBA. Yes, the Warriors are something of a superteam, but they’re homegrown. The Bucks have a superstar, but he’s a plane above his teammates. The Nets have two guys who are arguably the best in the league at the specific thing they do, and “the specific thing they do,” for each, is of huge importance to a team. Still, they’re not on the Warriors’ plane.
One Final Champion
The NCAA academic-year season ended yesterday, with Mississippi winning the College World Series after entering the NCAA Tournament as the final at-large bid. It was fitting for college baseball as a chaotic sport that it was a wild card who won it. It was fitting for this season of SEC dominance that it was an SEC team. That’s three straight now for the SEC, and four of five. A growing trend? It wouldn’t be surprising, given the prominence of SEC baseball relative to that of other leagues, and given the overall strength of SEC athletic departments relative to those of their national counterparts.
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Viewing schedule tonight, second screen rotation in italics:
- 7:07 PM EDT: Red Sox @ Blue Jays, Seabold vs. Gausman (MLB TV)
- 7:10 PM EDT: Twins @ Guardians, Gray vs. McKenzie (MLB TV)
- 7:45 PM EDT: Marlins @ Cardinals, López vs. Wainwright (MLB TV)
- 10:10 PM EDT: Orioles vs. Mariners, Wells vs. Kirby (MLB TV/ESPN+)
The timing of Wimbledon doesn’t really line up with our viewing schedule publication timing, but rest assured, we are watching Wimbledon in the mornings on the ESPN family of networks and the ESPN app. And enjoying it. (Remember that behind-the-scenes experimental betting we mentioned?)
