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06/04/2010 - (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Everyone who follows baseball knew that Stephen Strasburg's 2010 debut for the Washington Nationals was a matter of when, not if.
Now we all know the date -- Tuesday, June 8 versus the Pittsburgh Pirates -- and it couldn't be coming at a better time for Washington.
Though not expected to be playoff challengers this year, the Nationals found themselves five games over .500 (20-15) and just a game back of first place in the National League East on May 13. However, Washington has dropped 14 of 20 games since, including three straight and five of its last six. That has the Nationals back to their usual spot of last place in the division, 6 1/2 games off the pace.
So, with nothing left to prove in the minors the Nationals are getting ready to begin the Strasburg era, and with the NL East still wide open, it isn't a reach to say that Washington could be battling for a playoff spot down the stretch if the top pick of the 2009 draft can live up to the hype.
His minor league numbers can't dispute that. The 21-year-old went 7-2 with a 1.30 earned run average in 11 combined starts with both Double-A and Triple-A. In what was scheduled to be his final minor-league game, Strasburg threw five scoreless innings on Tuesday for Triple-A Syracuse.
"It's going to be a great feeling on Tuesday," the right-hander told Washington's website.
"We believe he is ready to go," general manager Mike Rizzo told his team's site on Monday. "We like that Stephen could bounce back from tough outings."
Interestingly, the Nationals will host Strasburg's debut one day after they select the top pick of the 2010 draft. While Rizzo isn't saying who he has decided to pick, it seems likely that catcher/outfielder Bryce Harper will be negotiating a contract with the team not too long after Monday's draft.
Harper would be the offensive answer that Strasburg likely will be for the pitching staff. In 62 games at Southern Nevada, Harper hit .442 with 29 homers, 89 RBI and a by far team-leading .986 slugging percentage.
Harper's road to the majors will likely be a longer one than Strasburg, especially if Washington decides to keep him at catcher. Plus, Harper doesn't turn 18 until Oct. 16.
METS: CAN'T BUY SANTANA A VICTORY
The ace is usually known as the stopper, a pitcher a team can count on to halt losing streaks.
But the offense needs to help too.
Nobody knows that better than New York Mets ace Johan Santana, who is just 1-0 over his last five starts despite a 0.74 ERA. He has yielded just three earned runs over that 36 2/3-inning span, but the Mets are a mere 1-4.
Not that Santana hasn't done his part. In fact, he hasn't allowed a run over his last two starts, a string of 15 innings, but the Mets have lost both games. They dropped a 2-0 contest to the Brewers on May 28 despite eight shutout innings from their lefty and then squandered seven scoreless Santana frames on Wednesday in a 5-1 extra-inning loss to the Padres.
"He's had nothing but scoreless innings for us and we can't seem to get him a win," New York manager Jerry Manuel said. "He goes out there, competes, gives us every chance to get some things going but it looks like we kind of shut down offensively."
How much does Manuel need to rely Santana? Figure that on Wednesday, in a one- run game and Santana having already thrown 106 pitches, the skipper allowed his 31-year-old hurler to lead off the seventh inning at the plate.
Manuel was trying to avoid using his bullpen too much before going to closer Francisco Rodriguez, but even that formula didn't work. After Pedro Feliciano and Elmer Dessens combined to work a scoreless eighth inning, Rodriguez gave up the game-tying run in the ninth frame in a game Santana kept his team in all night.
"You know when [Santana] takes the mound you're going to be in the game at some point," Manuel said. "Whatever [the other teams] allow, he's not going to allow anything more than that. That's just who he is."
Wednesday's loss sent the Mets back home following a 2-4 road trip and an 8-18 mark overall as the guest this year. New York sits five games back of the first-place Atlanta Braves in the NL East.
PHILLIES: LOOKING FOR AN OFFENSIVE SPARK
If the Philadelphia Phillies' hitting woes continue much longer, they will move past ice cold and into absolute zero territory.
The two-time defending NL champs have lost nine of their last 11, scoring just 14 runs in that span. That skid has the Phillies out of first place in the NL East as they now trail the Braves by three games. Philly was just swept in three games by Atlanta prior to Thursday's off day and wrapped a nine-game road trip 2-7.
Philadelphia's offense has been so bad as of late that one of its two wins was a perfect game by Roy Halladay on May 29. The Phillies, who have been shut out five times in their last 11 games, won that contest 1-0 on an unearned run.
"Our pitching has been great lately, but we haven't been scoring any runs for them," catcher Brian Schneider said after Wednesday's loss to the Braves. "I know every game counts but at least we have a lot of season left so we'll be ok."
Philadelphia hasn't scored more than three runs in any of its last 11 games for the first time since the first 11 games of the 1997 season, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
Manager Charlie Manuel has tried some different player and lineup combinations to get things going, but with no luck. One player who could provide that spark is injured shortstop Jimmy Rollins, who is in the midst of his second disabled-list stint due to a strained right calf.
In 12 games this year, Rollins is hitting .341 with two homers, seven RBI and 11 runs scored.
Philadelphia could also use some production from the middle of its lineup, especially three-hole hitter Chase Utley.
"We're not really swinging the bats well obviously," said Utley, who is hitting .143 (6-for-42) over his last 11 games with no homers and one RBI. "Our pitching staff's doing a great job keeping us in a lot of games, which is a good sign.
"We've been through this before and we're going to come out of it. We just got to keep working and battling every day."
As a team, the Phillies are batting .197 over its last 11 games with just two home runs and 77 strikeouts. The pitching staff, meanwhile, has compiled a 4.11 ERA.
BRAVES: ROLL INTO FIRST PLACE
The Braves have seen hard work translate into a rocket trip up the NL East standings.
The Braves looked left for dead early on after a nine-game losing streak from April 21-29 had them last in the division and 4 1/2 games off the first-place pace. That deficit even reached 6 1/2 contests in mid-May, but a nine-game winning streak, the club's longest since a 15-game run from April 16-May 2, 2000, has the Braves three games up on the Phillies for the top spot in the NL East.
Atlanta is 19-4 over its last 23 games and opened a four-game set in Los Angeles on Thursday with a victory following home three-game sweeps of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
"We have a streak; [the pitching] is the reason we're in first place," Brian McCann said on Atlanta's website. "Now we're getting everything. We've been swinging the bats really well the last few weeks, the last month, and we're playing good baseball."
Nobody is swinging the bat better for Atlanta right now than Troy Glaus. Brought in over the winter to add pop to the Braves' lineup, the first baseman has put a slow start behind him (.194 in April) and leads all of baseball with 33 RBI since May 1. He is also hitting .379 (11-for-29) over a nine-game hitting streak with four home runs and was named the Player of the Month for May.
Glaus wasn't the only one honored for a strong May, as Jason Heyward picked up his second straight Rookie of the Month award. The much-hyped outfielder hit .327 in May with four homers and 19 RBI, becoming the first rookie since the Milwaukee Brewers' Ryan Braun in 2007 to claim the honor in consecutive months.
"He's amazing," Braves' third baseman Chipper Jones told MLB.com of Heyward. "Nothing surprises you. He's playing like an All-Star."
MARLINS: JJ BIG FISH IN MARLINS' POND
Florida Marlins second baseman Dan Uggla said after Thursday's 3-2 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers that his club left a lot of runners on base, yet he gave the impression that he wasn't really worried.
That's because ace Josh Johnson was on the hill.
"He put us on his back, and you go along for the ride," Uggla said.
That wasn't something Johnson was able to do in 2007, when his season was limited to just four starts due to an elbow injury that led to Tommy John surgery for the right-hander. He has been outstanding since his return in July of 2008, going 28-8 in 59 starts since the surgery.
Johnson's efforts on Thursday allowed the Marlins to break even at 5-5 on a 10-game homestand with victories in four of the residency's final five games. He also showed his ability to bounce back from some tough luck last time out, when he was on the losing end of Phillies starter Roy Halladay's perfect game on Saturday.
The 26-year-old suffered the loss despite allowing just one unearned run over seven innings.
"It didn't even cross my mind the whole time," said Johnson on Florida's website after beating Milwaukee with seven innings of one-run ball. "Not even in the past five days."
The 2002 fourth round pick is 6-2 on the season with a 2.10 ERA and won the 40th game of his career on Thursday. He has allowed just two earned runs over his last five starts, going 3-1 with a 0.53 ERA.
Florida, 4 1/2 games back of the first-place Braves in the NL East, plays its next nine on the road at the Mets, Phillies and Tampa Bay Rays.
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Ice Box and Fly Down, both trained by Nick Zito, we
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Newport, Wales (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Germany's Marcel Siem shot a four-under 67
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World Cup: Breaking down Group G >>
Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Considered to be this World Cup's "Group
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relat
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New Zea
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Dutch coach Bert van Marwijk's si
My fellow Americans, as tempting as it may be to don the coat and HD-ready tie in order to deliver this State of the Game address before the cameras, I know better. As Brad Paisley sings on his latest album, "I'm so much cooler online."
The ideas for this annual essay to kick off the MySportsbook.com college football betting preview flowed like frat-house beer, which is to say they were cheap and spilled all over the floor. The 2007 season will be better than 2007, if only because there will be more of it. A year ago, the NCAA Football Rules Committee made two rule changes in the interest of speeding up the game. These changes went over like Kobe burgers at a vegan banquet.
To its credit, the rules committee rectified its mistakes. This season the clock once again will start when a kickoff is received, rather than when it is kicked, and the clock will not start so quickly on a change of possession.
However, kickoffs have been moved back five yards, to the 30, which will force more returns. (Thus forcing the clock to run. Clever, huh?) Special teams might decide a lot of games, because coaching strategy will come straight out of another new Paisley lyric (almost), I'd like to check you for kicks.
Paisley sings with a twang, which is why he's appropriate for this college football season. The sun coming up over the 2007 college football betting lines season rises from the south. It's a Southern football world. As the Southeastern Conference begins its 75th year, the power shift is noticeable.
Eight-figure budgets, glamorous settings -- and that's just for the head coaches. The SEC has four coaches who have won national championships -- the greatest aggregation of coaching know-how since Eddie Robinson dined alone.
Steve Spurrier, Phil Fulmer, Nick Saban and Urban Meyer have given lie to the idea that a conference championship game is too daunting a hurdle on the road to No. 1. In six of the past 10 seasons, the national champions played and won a conference championship game -- three of the six (Tennessee, 1998; LSU, 2003; Florida, 2007) from the SEC.
There will be more of the same this season, if the preseason prognostications are correct. Six SEC teams are in the preseason coaches' poll, more than from any other conference. Only one conference has talent so deep that a team with 15 returning starters, including the best quarterback in the league, from an eight-win season is considered an afterthought. That may speak more to Kentucky's losing legacy than to the wisdom of the predictions, but there you have it. And seriously, keep an eye on Wildcats QB Andre' Woodson.
The reach of the South extends all the way to No. 1. Take a look at the team that is a consensus pick to win the national championship. The quarterback is from Shreveport. The best wide receiver is from Nashville. The top recruit is from New Orleans.
So what's the campus doing in Los Angeles? Hey, it is the University of Southern California.
USC lost two Pacific-10 Conference games a year ago, the first time that had happened in five seasons, and university officials withstood the urge to form blue-ribbon panels to unearth the cause of such a disaster. Instead, the Trojans gathered themselves and routed Michigan, 32-18, in the Rose Bowl.
USC's losses at Oregon State and at UCLA last year should have given pause to those who question the Pac-10's football prowess (such as, without naming names, L.M. from Baton Rouge). The league only got deeper this season; Dennis Erickson is taking over an Arizona State team that never quite got out of its own way under his predecessor, Dirk Koetter.
Erickson will resume his quest to become the first coach to win a national championship at two schools. Both he and Spurrier, now in his third season at South Carolina, returned to college football at schools with lower profiles than where they won their titles.
That isn't the case for the third coach looking for the national championship double. You may have missed this, but NASA reported the astronauts on the space shuttle last spring made contact with what can only be described as beings from another galaxy.
The leader of the aliens said, "We come in peace," followed by, "So how do you think Nick Saban will do at Alabama?"
The public is reacting to the new Crimson Tide coach as if he is the Barry Bonds of college football -- beloved at home for what his fans believe he is going to do, hated on the road for his intimidating attitude and for what his detractors believe he did (bend NCAA recruiting rules). I made this comparison from the dais at a charity dinner in Mobile, Ala., last month, and the chill that washed over me didn't come from the air conditioning.
Saban will attempt to prove that he can remake in Tuscaloosa what he built in Baton Rouge, much like another member of the national championship fraternity. Bobby Bowden is attempting to remake at Florida State what he built at, um, Florida State. Bowden rebuilt his offensive staff, bringing in four new coaches led by Saban's former offensive coordinator, Jimbo Fisher, to jump-start an offense that has been dead for a couple of years.
The Atlantic Coast Conference is expected to show new signs of life, too. That is said with no disrespect toward last season's champion, Wake Forest, which provided one of the best story lines of 2007. The Demon Deacons begin this season in their customary position, overshadowed by the Virginia Techs, Miamis and Florida States.
It's not that Wake will find it difficult to duplicate its success in 2007 as much as the feeling that success engendered. Surprising success is the narcotic of sport. It never feels quite so euphoric the next time. Big East commissioner Mike Tranghese has figured this out. He refers to 2007, when a league looked down upon by fans and foes alike took three undefeated teams into November, as "Cinderella."
The fairy tale may be over, but the Big East has four genuine Heisman Trophy candidates in Louisville quarterback Brian Brohm, West Virginia tailback Steve Slaton and quarterback Pat White, and Rutgers tailback Ray Rice. Rutgers, as did Wake Forest and, of course, Boise State, proved last season that the have-nots in college football occasionally have quite a lot.
The Broncos' rousing 43-42 overtime victory over Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl has raised the profile of all schools in conferences that don't get automatic BCS bids. This season, TCU and Hawaii are the preseason favorites to burst through the BCS doors and earn an at-large bid. The Warriors return 14 starters from an 11-3 team, including quarterback Colt Brennan.
Brennan not only broke the single-season record with 58 touchdown passes in 2007, but he also led Division I-A in passing efficiency (186.0). The senior is expected to contend for the Heisman Trophy, and neither his success nor the rise of his team should come as any surprise in the 2007 season.
After all, Hawaii is the southernmost team in the country.
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