I’ve been watching some of the Little League World Series, and ESPN puts these little factoids on the screen about the players.
Favorite player. Favorite movie. Favorite food.
Normal kid stuff.
Except I could swear I saw one kid whose favorite food was Wagyu beef.
Wagyu.
When I was that age, my favorite food was whatever cereal had a toy physically inside the box. I was lucky if I didn’t eat the toy.
Then I swear another kid listed Dubai chocolate.
These aren’t Little Leaguers. These are tiny influencers who happen to play shortstop.
Who invented Dubai Chocolate, anyways? I’m not super old, but I’d NEVER heard of it until 2 years ago.
I’m waiting for today’s game when some 12-year-old from Pennsylvania steps to the plate and ESPN tells me:
Favorite Food: Truffle Risotto
Favorite Vacation Spot: The Maldives
Favorite Investment Vehicle: Municipal Bonds
Meanwhile, he’s still young enough that his mom probably has to remind him to put on sunscreen and don’t pick your boogers.
Little League has changed.
Apparently the concession stand has too.
Yesterday’s Sports Mess
Another 1-2 day.
Which means we’ve now gone:
1-8.
Then 4-0.
Then 0-3.
Then 1-2.
Then 1-2.
At this point we’re not on a streak.
We’re drawing a mountain range.
⚾ DODGERS / BRAVES UNDER 7 ✅
This was beautiful.
Atlanta 1. Los Angeles 0.
We spent yesterday talking about Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Chris Sale being two excellent pitchers in a game where runs should require paperwork.
Apparently the paperwork was denied.
Sale threw a complete-game shutout.
Yamamoto allowed one run.
The only run of the game came on a first-inning home run.
We were worried about whether seven gave us enough protection.
Turns out we could have set the total at 2.
This was the handicap working exactly the way we drew it up.
Two excellent pitchers.
Very little offense.
No bullpen nonsense required.
Bullseye.
⚾ NEW YORK YANKEES F5 ML ❌
This one was considerably less beautiful.
We went into the first-five laboratory because Gerrit Cole against Hayden Wesneski looked like New York had the starting-pitching advantage.
Houston led 1-0 after five.
Cole wasn’t terrible.
Wesneski was simply better during the five innings we purchased.
And the Yankees contributed exactly zero runs to our cause.
There’s no blister here.
Nobody’s finger fell apart.
Nobody got abducted by aliens between the third and fourth innings.
We identified a pitching advantage that didn’t materialize.
Clean miss.
🏈 NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS -2.5 ❌
Remember Number 47?
I hope he enjoyed himself.
Because basically nobody wearing a Patriots uniform did.
Cleveland 37. New England 13.
Yesterday we spent considerable time talking about Cleveland resting starters and using Dillon Gabriel with the second team before Taylen Green took over later.
Then Gabriel went out and threw three touchdown passes.
Apparently Charlton Heston was not the only one good in that Taylen Green movie.
But our bigger mistake was looking too closely at who Cleveland wasn’t playing and not closely enough at who New England wasn’t playing.
The Patriots sat a small ZIP code worth of players themselves.
That’s the preseason lesson.
You don’t handicap one team’s depth chart.
You handicap both.
This wasn’t bad luck.
We missed it.
THE GIANT SCOREBOARD
Yesterday’s 1-2 moves us to:
ALL SPORTS: 1,031-1,063-7
And our recent adventure is now:
1-8 → 4-0 → 0-3 → 1-2 → 1-2
Somewhere there’s a cardiologist looking at that and reaching for the phone.
Meanwhile:
TENNIS: 0-1
Still untouched.
Still pristine.
Still wondering why we ever bothered.
TODAY’S GRINDER
We’re back to baseball.
Three games made it through today’s grinder, and unlike yesterday, we’re not going to spend any portion of the morning trying to determine whether Number 47 has another job lined up.
⚾ MIAMI MARLINS ML
Eury Pérez against Jackson Kent.
This is the cleanest starting-pitching advantage on today’s card.
Pérez has been good.
Kent has had a rough introduction to major-league hitters.
Originally, the instinct here was first five.
Then yesterday happened.
The lesson from the Yankees isn’t that first-five bets are bad. It’s that we shouldn’t automatically choose the market simply because we’ve identified a starting-pitcher advantage.
Find the edge first. Pick the market second.
Today that leads us to the full-game moneyline.
Give me Miami.
⚾ LOS ANGELES DODGERS -1.5
We’re going back to the Dodgers.
But different.
Tarik Skubal is pitching for them now.
That’s still a sentence my brain occasionally needs a moment to process.
The Dodgers are expensive on the moneyline, so instead of paying the admission price we’re asking them to win by two.
Skubal gives us the pitching advantage.
Detroit has been struggling.
And the run line gives us a much more reasonable price than simply asking the Dodgers to win.
We are ignoring the Dodgers travel rule on this one, but only because Skubal probably still has a comfy house there.
If we’re going to keep saying “know your value,” we should occasionally demonstrate that we know what those words mean.
Dodgers -1.5.
⚾ MILWAUKEE BREWERS ML
This is the expensive one.
Logan Henderson against Cody Bradford.
Henderson has been excellent.
Milwaukee has been excellent.
And unlike the Dodgers, I’m not convinced the run line is the better way to attack this one.
So we’re paying a little more for the Brewers simply to win the baseball game.
Sometimes value means finding a plus number.
Sometimes it means changing markets.
And sometimes it means admitting that the boring answer is still the answer you like.
Milwaukee ML.
TODAY’S PICKS
⚾ MIAMI MARLINS ML
⚾ LOS ANGELES DODGERS -1.5
⚾ MILWAUKEE BREWERS ML
Three baseball games.
No preseason football.
No Number 47.
No tennis.
And, unless somebody lists A5 Japanese Wagyu with a black-truffle reduction as his favorite food during the Little League World Series today, hopefully no 12-year-olds making me question my own culinary accomplishments.
We’re sticking with the rule:
Find the edge first. Pick the market second. Know your value.
Although apparently we now need to add:
Know both teams’ depth charts before betting preseason football.
We’ll workshop that one.
This isn’t called Pick What I Pick.
It’s called Don’t Pick What I Pick.
Please wager accordingly.
