Monthly Archives: June 2019

Rays vs. Twins MLB betting preview

Odds courtesy of OddsShark.com

Anyone for a Tampa Bay Rays-Minnesota Twins ALDS or ALCS? Could happen, although the various networks that televise Major League Baseball’s playoffs would hate that with two small-market, rather anonymous teams. The Rays and Twins open a three-game series at Target Field on Tuesday. Minnesota will be the series betting favorite, and opened as -120 chalk for Tuesday’s contest at sportsbooks.

It’s too early to say any team is a “lock” anything in MLB, but the Twins would have to suffer a mega-collapse to not win the AL Central Division for the first time since 2010. Minnesota is easily the biggest surprise in baseball under first-year manger Rocco Baldelli, who has to be the leading AL Manager of the Year candidate. After finishing 23rd in the majors last year in home runs, the Twins are first in 2019 with 147 and on a potential record pace. Just not sure they have the pitching to really be taken seriously as pennant contenders.

Tampa Bay led the AL East for much of the season but has fallen off a bit. It still leads the AL Wild-Card race. It’s a credit to this team’s front office that the Rays annually overachieve because they have the worst stadium situation in the four major American pro sports leagues, draw no fans and have the lowest payroll in the majors.

EPL news: SportNation AI reveals no plot holes; moneybags Big Six; VAR promise

Three stories from the English Premier League including SportNation’s AI painting a familiar year-end picture, a report on how the ‘Big Six’ remain the ‘Big Six’, and VAR promise.

A week after the English Premier League (EPL) released their 2019/20 fixture list, the bookmaker SportNation.bet plugged the details into artificial intelligence burrowed deep within their subterranean magma, and the tale forced out of the rooftop was a familiar one.

AI predicts that Manchester City will once again turn the EPL into a sprawling necropolis with only Liverpool having a bookmakers chance of creating an upset.

History doesn’t favour the AI’s choice of winner, with only Manchester United ever winning the title in three consecutive seasons, first in 1998/99, 1999/00, 2000/01, and then again in 2006/7, 2007/8 and 2008/9, making it more of a mountain range than a hobbit hill of a task.