The American League looks be the league most under threat of serious alteration to its playoff landscape when MLB announces its BioGenesis suspensions later today, as is expected. Most of the name players involved are from AL teams—from Alex Rodriguez to Nelson Cruz to Jhonny Peralta to Bartolo Colon. So as we wait, our MLB coverage gives a summation of how the race looks right now, including injuries and the schedule ahead.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are riding high and threatening to break open the NL West, but if the Dodgers are going to keep their hot streak going, they have to take the tough road through St. Louis. ESPN’s Monday Night Baseball has a good game tonight from Busch Stadium, with the Zack Greinke-Adam Wainwright showdown keynoting TV’s daily sports schedule.
Help is on the way for the Arizona Diamondbacks, and a national TV audience will get the first look at it on Sunday afternoon. Brandon McCarthy returns from the disabled list to help a starting pitching rotation that’s been struggling. The D-Backs play the final game of a weekend series in Boston and McCarthy’s return will televised by TBS at 1:35 PM ET
One of the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series contemporary legends turns 42 on Sunday, and more importantly, he just turned into the Top 10 in the points standings after last week in Indianapolis. I refer to Jeff Gordon, who’s got a lot of momentum as the circuit arrives back at Pocono Raceway for the GoBowling 400 (1 PM ET, ESPN) on Sunday.
Playoff race baseball is going full steam with a number of good games, but the highlight of Saturday’s daily sports tour has to be in Canton. Today is Induction Day, and at 7 PM ET, the NFL Network will show the ceremony inducting five new men into the Pro Football Hall Of Fame
It doesn’t seem fair to call the New York Mets a disappointment. They weren’t expected to contend for the playoffs. They’re playing basically at the pace of the 74-win projection they had in Las Vegas’ Over/Under win props at the start of the year. If you’re a disappointment, don’t you have to actually fail to meet a reasonable expectation?
No one was expecting great things on the South Side of Chicago this baseball season. The White Sox were not seen as a serious playoff contender, in spite of having made a strong push in the AL Central during the 2012 season. But did anyone really think the White Sox would be this bad—40-66, and almost twenty games off the second wild-card spot? And all this being done before the fire sale of talent at the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline?
Now that the calendar says August, and MLB’s July 31 non-waiver trade deadline has passed, we can set the tone for the season’s final eight-plus weeks. While the playoff races in both the American League and National League are the most important way to do that, there’s one other race that shouldn’t be overlooked—it’s the race each team has against itself to meet their Over/Under win total from the preseason
We’ve got 8-plus weeks to go in baseball’s regular season, and while the playoff races are the main topic, let’s also not overlook how each team is faring against its preseason win prop—the number posted on Las Vegas where you can bet the Over/Under on how games each will win.
The road doesn’t get a lot easier for the Redbirds tonight, as they face yet another contender on the road with a visit to Cincinnati, as St. Louis again leads up the daily sports TV agenda.
It was a season that held such promise for the Washington Nationals. After the 2012 run to the NL East title, the Nats were primed to take the next step. They had Stephen Strasburg ready for the whole year, they had playoff experience and 2013 was proclaimed “World Series or bust”, by no less than veteran manager Davey Johnson—a man with a little experience in winning World Series’ from his days running the 1986 New York Mets. Where did it all go so wrong?
The National League playoff race stands in sharp contrast to where the American League is at right now. While the AL has nine teams within five games of postseason play, the NL has only six, and it’s looking like the prime drama is going to be the fight in the NL Central to see which team at least earns automatic passage into the Division Series.
