Toronto Blue Jays Snap Phillies' 7-Game Win Streak

Kicking Off with MLB Highlights and Upsets Some day baseball yesterday on a full Wednesday slate around MLB. Only seven games on this Thursday. We'll preview those a little bit later on. The hottest team entering yesterday in Major League Baseball in Philadelphia. The Phillies had won seven in a row, 11 straight at home inside citizens Bank ballpark, and were a pretty hefty home favorite in an afternoon game yesterday to make it eight in a row where they win over the Toronto Blue Jays. Except that didn't happen. The Jays do win 5 to 3 over Philly in Philadelphia to snap that seven game win streak. In the 11 straight home wins, Toronto scored three runs in the sixth. Philly had their chances in the home half of the ninth, 5 to 3, after a Bryson Stott double that made it 5 to 3 with runners on second and third only one out. The Phils had two chances with the go ahead run at the dish, unable to convert. Toronto wins 5 to 3 as an underdog on the road in Philadelphia. Yeah, Phillies were on that -170 to -175 favorite yesterday with Nola on the mound at home. Should have probably been a victory. And even though you had a pretty good game early on through five innings, it was 1 to 1. But the bottom fell out there in the sixth inning for Aaron Nola, who finished with five and two thirds innings pitched, nine hits and four earned runs. Seven K's. No walks probably should have been good enough for a victory, but the Phillies bats didn't come to play yesterday, and through a large portion of that game, the Phillies really only had one hit. I thought the lefty bats would come alive for the Philadelphia Phillies. Schwarber didn't get a base hit, but got an RBI, but I was locked in on. Harper, went zero for four yesterday and also Marsh went one for four. Actually scored two runs but no RBI there. Can't win every single game that you have. Good win for the Toronto Blue Jays. But in a game where this wasn't really supposed to be a toss up, that's a bad loss for the Phils. Still, the most wins in all of Major League Baseball 26 now tied alongside the LA Dodgers, the Dodgers have the longest win streak now in Major League Baseball at seven in a row. We'll look at their game yesterday, ending out their three game midweek set Yankees Dominate Astros: A Deep Dive against the Miami Marlins. We had a huge matchup yesterday up in the Bronx between the Yankees and the Astros. And once again, the Yanks continue to have Houston's number six games between these two teams. Now so far in this MLB campaign, six victories for the pinstripes 9 to 4. The win for New York yesterday over Houston. The Astros dropped to 12 games below 500. Now 12 and 24. But for the Yankees a picture perfect day. Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Juan Soto all hit a home run. In fact, Juan Soto had a five RBI performance as the Yanks win, 9 to 4. They were booked as a -162 home money line favorite, a total of nine and a half does Sky over. Yeah, it just felt like a paint by numbers game all the way through for the Yankees. If you're entering in this game and handicapping it, Eric, it is not a great pitcher. You see now the era of 8.44. But his analytical numbers are a little bit better than what his ERA actually showed. So I'm like, all right. So it was probably a decent play yesterday. He goes nuts. But typically you'd be looking at the big boppers like Stanton and Judge. Both of those guys came through. So I can imagine if you were the casual handicapper and saying, you know what, they had pitcher against a hot team at the plate, let me go that direction. You made a lot of money on the New York Knicks yesterday and excuse me, the New York Yankees and maybe the Knicks as well. If maybe. Yeah, but yeah, exactly. But the Yankees I like what I'm seeing out of them here. And I can't stand what I'm seeing out of the Houston Astros because we keep on having this moniker. It's going to get, you know, it's getting late early at that point as you take a look at old Yogi Berra clip. But if we're looking at them directly, where do they pull this out? Ben. It's not as if you can just say, okay, we'll hit our way out of this because your pitchers aren't performing at all. Like if you're giving up routinely five, six, seven, eight runs, it feels like oa night to night basis, it doesn't matter how good your lineup is, you're not going to win that much. So 12 and 24 on the season, and I'm sure the Yankees are enjoying pounding the Astros on a day to day basis right now. Again, we've had the conversation. What exactly is the concern level around Houston, albeit in early May? It is still a 12 game hole. The Astros have to dig and claw their way out of. It is going to be difficult work, and they're an underdog today and rather early start, not day baseball, but 5:06 p.m. Eastern Time scheduled first pitch in the Guardians' Extra-Inning Thriller Against Tigers finale of this midweek series against New York. We now go to a divisional duel in the American League Central. Some heroics yesterday for the Cleveland Guardians, who walk it off in extras against the Tigers 5 to 4. The victory for Cleveland at home. They were a slight -122 home moneyline favorite David Frei hit the game tying solo shot in the home half of the ninth. Brian Rocchio, the game winning walk off RBI single in the bottom of the 10th. Cleveland still atop the Al central with the 5 to 4 victory. A great pitching performance by Olsen in that game. Six innings pitched, two runs, but only one of those earned, and he drops his ERA to 2.52. But also, you talk about being clutch at home. Look at the final three innings of that game, eighth inning, ninth inning, 10th inning, a run there by Cleveland, a run by Cleveland and a run by Cleveland and Extras to win. That's a nice comeback. Victories Now you see Cleveland at 24 and 13 and also the Detroit Tigers. We didn't know really what to expect from them coming into the season. But even with that loss still above 500 in a very competitive American Central division, when you look at Spencer Olsen, Mark Zito made the point yesterday. The Tigers have lost the last six starts that Olsen has has made, and in the last three he has only given up three earned runs in total. It's been difficult for Olsen, who might have a good performance on the bump to match what the Tigers need to pull off offensive or the Royals Triumph Over Brewers: Key Performances bullpen to hold things down at the end. Our guy Vinny P, Vinnie Pasquantino another RBI yesterday for the Royals as Casey wins 6 to 4 over Milwaukee to win this week. Week midweek series against the Brewers 6 to 4. The victory yesterday for KC minus 120. Moneyline favorite a total of eight and a half at Kauffman doeso over again. Vinnie P two for three and RBI yesterday in the home half of the first. That's what he does man. How about Brady Singer on the mound three and one. Now on the season going five and a third innings giving up only one earned run dropping his ERA bend down to 2.36. And the Royals at 22 and 16. You're beating some pretty good ball clubs here. I mean the Brewers are good. Dropping that game only goes to 21 and 15. That's a nice look. But also finally back in the lineup here Christian Yelich oh for five performance. You know it's going to get better. But that is a big lift which he had. He was what maybe three three and a half weeks. He wasn't in that lineup. And still the Brewers were above 500. Let's see what the Brewers can do with the plate. Now with Yelich back in that lineup. The Brewers today do not have a day off. They take on the Cardinals. The Redbirds struggling. They've lost four in a row now in the bottom of the National League Central in the Al central for the five teams above 500, that includes the Tigers with the Royals and the twins now two and a half games behind Cleveland for the top spot in the division, we continue . For whatever reason, American League pitchers here on the early line, we confuse a few names. Reese Olson for the Detroit Tigers. I called him Spencer Olson. I don't know who Spencer Olson is. Lucas Gill is a Brazilian model. Luis Heal is the starting pitcher for the New York Yankees. We'll have to do a little bit of work to find out who Spencer Olson is. All right. Now back to the recaps. Yesterday around Major League Baseball, the Phillies entered yesterday as the hottest active team in major League Baseball. Dodgers Extend Winning Streak: Analyzing the Victory Longest active win streak of seven in a row. Now that distinction goes to the Dodgers seven straight wins for LA as well. After pulling off the midweek series sweep over the Miami Marlins. As was expected, LA booked as nearly a $3 favorite in each of these three games on the money line. Yesterday, though, 3 to 1, the victory for LA total of eight and a half stays under in all three runs. Courtesy of Teoscar Hernandez an RBI single in the first, a two run homer in the sixth. The Dodgers win three one over Miami. Should have heeded my own advice yesterday. Now granted, we thought the Dodgers would win because Weathers isn't a great pitcher. But how about Stone on the mound yesterday? Seven innings pitched, six earned runs. Excuse me? Six hits and only one earned run. That's a really good performance. Drops his ERA down to 3.55. But who is the guy in the lineup that was absolutely going to love? Right handed hitter in the four hole. It was supposed to be Will Smith, but got the day off being a catcher here. So who moves up as a right handed bat into that four hole? Teoscar Hernandez three RBI because you know Betts, Ohtani and Freeman are probably going to be on base at least multiple times, enough to drive that home. So if you cash that ticket, congratulations I went Mookie Betts one for four performance. Didn't cash in on an RBI. You can't hit, you know, ten runs every single game. It's nice to see the Dodgers say, you know what? Let's slow this one down three one. Final We'll take it because all they're looking forward to they know the hitting is going to be there throughout the entire season. Yeah. But if you're getting guys like Stone with pitching performances going seven innings pitched one earned run, even if it is against the Marlins, that's a really good sign for the Dodgers. So Teoscar Hernandez scored, of course, on his two run homer in the sixth. He bats right behind Freddy Freeman in that cleanup spot. Freddy in the three hole, Freddy scored two runs as he also had a double yesterday for LA. But the two guys in front Mookie Betts, as you said, DRS one for four at the dish. Not Shohei Ohtani's best day zero for four against Miami with two strikeouts. But as we look at these two stars for Los Angeles at the top of the lineup, both have been off to a very strong start to this 2024 Major League Baseball season. Shohei Ohtani, a 355 batting average that is best in all of MLB. Both guys have 27 RBIs. Mookie not all that far behind. Ohtani when it comes to the batting average this year. At 346, the 11 home runs that Ohtani has hit tied for second most in Major League Baseball. Marcelo Ozuna yesterday for the Atlanta Braves, getting up there, he now leads all of Major League Baseball with 12. Zood has been really good, but let's focus here on that first four of what it's typically on a night to night basis for the Dodgers. It's almost not fair. Mookie Betts is hitting 346. Ohtani is hitting 355. Freddy Freeman now spiking over 300. And typically in that four spots. Will Smith you know he's batting on the season. 331. That's outrageous. That's like everybody's on base to start the game every single night for the Los MVP Race Heats Up: Betts vs. Ohtani Angeles Dodgers. That is an unbelievable wealth of talent in that top four. But just getting back to those bats versus Ohtani wagers here, I guess maybe because Betts plays the field he's going to get the bump here for MVP. Even though I always look at MVP strictly as an offensive statistic as opposed to adding in defense because they have their own statistic. Basically in Golden Gloves. I'm interested to see how long this goes and how close this race is going to be because quite frankly, outside of injury, it's not going to slow down. These two guys at the top of the lineup going to have historic numbers here by the end of the season. Apparent. And I want to see who wins out. But I am amazed that Mookie Betts, still that heavy favorite, even have close. Those statistics are here. Ben, listen, this might be the last time you can bet anybody else in the National League MVP market, because when and if, as we expect Shohei Ohtani returns to the mound next year in 2025, he's going to be the favorite. He's not going to be trailing Mookie Betts by just about two and a half dollars dollars. Can anybody else outside of the two superstars for LA win it? Bryce Harper has been on an absolute tear, running Acuna Jr not nearly as historic as a season ago when he won this award. Would you place your hard earned money on anybody else outside of Betts and or Ohtani at this moment? I'm I would because the price points are really high for some really good players on some good teams that will be there in the end to try to get that extra bump. I call like extra curriculars like the Phillies finished with the best record in baseball. Bryce Harper probably had a really good season and it's just a matter of oh no. Betts hit 400. Of course it's going to be the MVP or Ohtani slugged 51 home runs. That's going to be tough to overcome. So right now not necessarily. But those price points are certainly enticing for a few of those guys. Yeah, absolutely. So it's a very, very, very long major league Baseball season where anything can happen, including injury, where you have a huge gap between the top two and the rest of the National League. Paul Skenes' Anticipated MLB Debut Welcome to our number two live right here on this Thursday on the Early Line on Sports Grid. And what a way to start off this second hour. Because alongside myself, Ben Stevens and Donny right side, it's maybe the most sought after man in all of baseball media at this moment. His name? Jack McMullen, of course, doing great work for just baseball media. Our friends that put together great content each and every day, but also the play by play voice of the Indianapolis Indians, the triple A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates, and Jack McMullen has called a couple of outings there in Indy for one, Paul Skenes, who now makes his Major League Baseball debut on Saturday for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Is this an exclusive that we have? Jack McMullen on this Thursday morning? Mid I mean, is it going to be hey, I heard this Skeens guy is good. Tell me about him, no man like it's funny, a lot of people want to talk about Paul Skenes. Right now, and, understandably so. If you haven't watched him throw. And I know that minor league baseball has kind of made that the free game of the week every time he throws. So a lot of people have already watched him throw and, you know, super thankful that they have because, you know we've been able to been able to call that. But, I mean, if you're watching him for the first time on Saturday and you didn't watch him at LSU start making popcorn like it is a show and it's more of a show than really any other pitcher in the game. He's sat 100.4 in an outing. It feels like he's having a bad day when he's sitting 99.7 with his four seamer, but his ability to mix in a great, great slider and a really good like high speed splitter at 95 and then a changeup as well that can make people look so stupid because guys are out in front. I mean, I think we may be watching a tremendous career to get going on Saturday against the Cubs. Jack McMullen a true pro's pro, because I was going to follow up with, hey, is this Paul Skeens guy any good? Is he advised me to, but he just answered the question right off the bat of course, Paul Skeens, the number one overall pick this past July in the 2023 Major League Baseball draft. He is set to make his MLB debut in the bigs on Saturday against the Cubs for the Pittsburgh Phillies' Impressive Run and MLB Standings Overview Pirates. Jack, let's spin it around the rest of Major League Baseball from yesterday. The hottest team entering Wednesday's slate in all of the bigs that was Philadelphia. They had won seven straight games. But all good things must come to a close at some point. That seven game win streak snapped by the Toronto Blue Jays yesterday in Philadelphia. Hey it's a long season. You're not going to win each and every single day. But when you look at what Philly has done in the seven game winning streak, really here in the last 2 to 3 weeks, just how good is this Phils team at the moment? They're ridiculous. They're playing like one of the better teams in all of baseball, if not the best team in all of baseball. And the teams that can contend with them right now are Atlanta, the Dodgers, the Yankees and the Orioles at this point. Yeah, and the thing is, like, you can poke holes in all of those teams, right now for the Yankees. Aaron Judge got off to a really slow start. He was starting to heat up a little bit. But you know what? It's still kind of slow out of the gates for the Dodgers. Like is their pitching all the way right. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is kind of struggled at points. Glasnow has been awesome. Buehler is back. That's great. But you know seven through nine were not performing for the first couple of weeks of the season. They're they're starting to heat up now Atlanta like I mean we just saw Atlanta lose two of three to the Dodgers. Maybe even a sweep I'm blanking on what happened on Sunday. But like I mean each team has a hole to poke in it except for Philly right now. What's the whole Nick Castellanos is struggling. It's okay. You got eight other guys in that lineup and all eight are hitting the crap out of the ball right now, man. Like Trey Turner is hitting 340. Alec Bohm is hitting 340 with an Ops in the mid nine 50s. Like they are so sound offensively not to mention they have one of the 3 or 4 best starting rotation eras in all of baseball. Wheeler has looked like the part. He has looked like the best arm in the game. Ranger Suarez looks like the best lefty in baseball right now. I think it's Tarik Skubal in Detroit, but Suarez is right there at the moment. And dude, Nola we know is going to eat innings. Spencer Turnbull had a great start to the year for him. Christopher Sanchez Taijuan Walker the list goes on. The Phillies are a wagon right now I love it. Love that term wagon here. And also you take a look at that pitching staff. You put it into numbers here. The best xfip in baseball at 3.31 through 340 innings. And also Ben's favorite statistic here. Jack 7.2 War for the Phillies pitching Astros' Struggles Continue: A Closer Look staff. By far the best in Major League Baseball. Now, as we digress from one of the better teams in baseball right now, the Philadelphia Phillies, one of the better teams in baseball over the past decade or so, the Houston Astros, they get hammered again in the Bronx yesterday. Jack 9 to 4. They dropped to 12 and 24. When is it going to be too late to say? Well, the Astros sooner or later better get it together. Is the time now we're getting there. We're I don't know if we're not there right now. It's in the next week or two. Donnie, let me ask a follow up. Real quick. Do you like the lowercase x stat? As a guy that covers baseball full time, I'm not a big fan of the lowercase x stats. Come on, get with it. Get with it. We'll get you the tattoo on your arm. We'll live it, we'll breathe it. We'll love it. Got you all right? Yeah. Small font, like size six, size seven. Font. Just an x, and we'll go forward with that, no, I mean, the Astros are an interesting case because you're not going to point to Jose Altuve and Kyle Tucker and say you need to do more. They're already doing like everything that they've been asked to do. The only guy that is kind of underperform, not named Alex Bregman. Bregman has been off to a brutal start in a contract year, which I was not expecting in the slightest. The only guy in that lineup that is not performed to really elevated standards is Yordan Alvarez, and at the end of the day, Alvarez is still hitting the ball out of the ballpark. He still has an Ops just above the league average, and we know that's going to go up. The problem is the bullpen and the starting rotation, starting rotation health has been an issue and in 2022, when they looked the part as the best team in baseball, they were not getting hurt on the mound. They had I think six guys make starts for them that year. Maybe seven guys make starts. That is an egregiously low number. That is excellent health luck in the starting rotation. Now they've needed to rely on a guy like Spencer Arrighetti who's got an ERA over eight, and they have needed to rely on a guy named Hunter Brown who, like I was hoping would have a mid three ERA at this point. And he's sitting in the nines right now. So it's great that Verlander's back. It's great that Framber Valdez was just a minor hiccup with his arm, but at the end of the day, we looked at this team saying, oh, Abreu, you hater Pressly are going to shut the door in the seventh, eighth and ninth. They're doing anything but that right now. They've got one of the worst bullpens in baseball. So the team that came in with the best bullpen in baseball on paper, being one of the worst, is not a recipe for success in the slightest. So you look at Houston at the moment, concern level, somewhere between 1 to 10. What would you say that number is? Right now? Oh man. We played this game on the Just Baseball show last week, my co-host Peter said, 0 or 1. I said four, and then my other co-host arm said like six. I think I'm with ARM now. I'd say six. The Astros are really good. Like they've got great players, but at the end of the day, we're about a quarter of the way home here already. So like at some point you have to snap it into high gear and you know, when do you run out of time? We say, oh, baseball's a long season. Yeah. Three. And then oh we're at the all star break. And it becomes a very short season. If you've got a lot of ground. So it's hard to look at a team that is like sleepwalking. I guess through the front part of the season and saying like, you know what? They're going to kick it into gear. I like it. We'll see what happens. I think this month is massive and I they will tell us all we need to know about the Houston Astros as a plus 148 number for the Astros at this moment to even see the American League postseason. If you were to buy in on a price, might National League MVP Race: Betts or Ohtani? that be it? We shall see quickly here. Jack on the National League MVP race. It seems to be a battle between Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani. If you had to bet it, who's your favorite at the moment? Well, one of them's a DH. One of them is not a DH. That is kind of the easy separator for me, and I know that the writers that vote on this do take that into account. But at the end of the day, if Shohei Ohtani makes them the best team in baseball, then like, let's actually think about the definition of most valuable player. Like Ohtani is most outstanding