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VirginiaCavs

VirginiaCavs

CTG Super Moderator
Staff member
MLB Bet or Fade for June 28: The Blue Jays Are Flying High

Tampa Bay Rays vs. Baltimore Orioles
Saturday, June 28, 2025 at 4:05 p.m. ET at Camden Yards

Baltimore's Let-Down Spot

Situational reasoning suffices to justify a wager on the Rays today.

When bettors see that a team attained a massive run total in its most recent game, they tend to think highly of that team's outlook for its current game.

This line of thought, sustained by recency bias, is erroneous.

The Orioles perfectly prove my point: they are 0-3 in the game following one in which they scored ten or more runs. In those three losses, they scored a combined total of four runs. Yesterday, they scored 22 runs. Expect their offense to come crashing back down to Earth.

Conversely, the Rays will score a lot of runs. They get to face Baltimore starter Zach Eflin, against whom, collectively, they bat .364 and slug .667. Eight different Tampa Bay batters slug at least .600 with Eflin on the mound.

Tampa Bay's Superior PItching

It is worth observing that Tampa Bay's pitching succes will not simply be a product of Baltimore's offensive ineptitude today.
Zack Littell starts for the Rays today. He loves pitching in Baltimore's venue, where he boasts a 2.30 ERA in three career starts and where he now faces a weaker version of the Orioles' lineup.

It is true that Littell's road ERA is worse than his home ERA, but road ERA is often a useless statistic because it does not discriminate between venues. A major decline, for a pitcher, in success on the road might indicate a reason to blindly fade him in away games, but Littell's ERA is only slightly worse than his home one because he succeeds in some road venues. Camden Yards is one of those venues.

As for their relievers, the Rays' bullpen ranks number three, positioning it 21 spots ahead of Baltimore's.

The superiority of the Rays' bullpen makes them worthy of a full-game investment.

Best Bet: Rays ML at +100 with BetOnline










San Diego Padres vs. Cincinnati Reds
Saturday, June 28, 2025 at 4:10 p.m. ET at Great American Ball Park

San Diego's Unreliable Starter

Randy Vasquez starts for the Padres today.

Vasquez might seem to have improved his form because he held the Royals to two runs in his last start.

However, his 5.22 FIP (like ERA but factors out fielding) shows how poorly he actually performed in that start.

He has yielded an FIP of over 5.00 in each of his last five starts, as he even struggled at home against baseball's third-worst run-producing squad on the road, the Pirates.

Cincinnati's Improved Lineup

The Reds' lineup began the season in terrible form. If you haven't been paying attention to Cincinnati's offense since that ugly start, then you are nescient.

It is important to keep track of how teams fare in different phases of the season because it is a long season. How the Reds looked in the beginning of April is completely irrelevant to their current form in the final days of June.

Most recently, they scored eight runs in a seven-run win over San Diego.

Their outlook tonight is particularly strong because they rank fifth with a .452 slugging rate against Vasquez's favorite pitches from righties.

Andrew Abbott

Cincinnati has a tremendous advantage with Andrew Abbott on the mound.

In contrast to Vasquez, Abbott has allowed a combined total of two earned runs in his last three games.

Contrasting the run-limiting abilities of both starting pitchers hardly begins to describe Abbott's superiority as a pitcher. Compared to Vasquez, he also does a much better job, for example, of limiting walks and home runs.

Abbott's outlook today is particularly solid because he loves facing San Diego batters. They are 4-for-36 with zero extra-base hits, amounting to a .111 slugging rate, with him on the mound.

Not only do the Reds have the clearly better pitcher, but they have an in-form lineup and a clear matchup advantage.

Best Bet: Reds First-Five -0.5 at -120 with BetOnline









Toronto Blue Jays vs. Boston Red Sox
Saturday, June 28, 2025 at 4:10 p.m. ET at Fenway Park

Chris Bassitt in Boston

This game presents a great opportunity to invest in the road team because the Blue Jays are favored as slightly as they are because they are on the road even though their starter today, Chris Bassitt, is at-home in Boston.

In Boston's venue, Bassitt boasts a 1.89 ERA in five career starts that total 33.1 innings.

Bassitt's success against Red Sox batters contributes to his comfort in their venue.

Collectively, they bat .200 and slug .247 with Bassitt on the mound. In 85 total at-bats against him, they have all of four doubles and zero other extra-base hits.

Sizzling Toronto

Despite being on a road trip, the Blue Jays have gained great form in general.

They have won three of their last four games, with those wins coming by a total of 19 runs. They have scored 29 runs in their last four games combined.

Their lineup's outlook is solid against Boston starter Lucas Giolito. Giolito seems to be in good form based on surface-level stats, but his 6.74 FIP in his last game is an indication that trouble lies ahead for him.

It is only a matter of time until Giolito starts giving up a lot of runs, which will reflect his actually poor form. That time is now. Toronto batters reliably thrive against Giolito, against whom they collectively slug .515.

Best Bet: Blue Jays First-Five ML at -117 with BetOnline
 
Whew!
Ulysses?
A second?
Now there was a mad genius.
I was always partial to A Portrait ....
It was not only autobiographical fiction (which they all are to some extent) but was the beginning of the techniques Joyce employed in later works and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings. He was an early Pynchon.
He also had to scale this novel down from a much larger failed first novel no one wanted to print.
I guess I can relate.
 
Nice write ups. Think I like the Reds FF play the best of the 3.

Fading Eovaldi yesterday paid off. Today I’m rolling with 2 pays only and am ok drinking the juice.

- Ray over 17.5 outs -165
- Ray over 6.5 K’s -140

As long as Ray avoids the one long inning I love my chances to cash both.

I want to take SF -.5 FF as well but I don’t trust the SF offense. Could easily be a 0-0 or 1-0 Chi Sox lead after 5.
 
Patrick9 said:
Whew!
Ulysses?
A second?
Now there was a mad genius.
I was always partial to A Portrait ....
It was not only autobiographical fiction (which they all are to some extent) but was the beginning of the techniques Joyce employed in later works and references to a character's psychic reality rather than to his external surroundings. He was an early Pynchon.
He also had to scale this novel down from a much larger failed first novel no one wanted to print.
I guess I can relate.
Click to expand...
Really need a third read. Ulysses is tough. I keep getting lost in the stylistic radicality of the work, I lose too much sight of what he says about Irish history, gender, and so many other things.
I feel like there are also modernist bits in Dubliners, such as in the way that the landscape description in A Little Cloud reflects Chandler’s own state of mind. But certainly Portrait represents a more advanced stage in Joyce as a modernist writer.
I remember Stephen Hero having some good dialogue. Joyce‘s wife had to rescue it from the fire.
 
I had forgotten that bit.
He did burn Stephen Hero.
If I remember, I think his sister was there also plunging into the flames.
Joyce was very melodramatic and bipolar (by today's standards) and probably burnt it as a sort of ego boost, knowing they revered his talent almost as much as he.
Reading and stopping Ulysses and picking it back up so many times, I've come to believe, while physically one man wrote it, numerous "sides" to Joyce contributed.
Whatever that means?
I can't imagine what or how he explained parts of it to an editor (if there was one?) but definitely his publisher.
 
Patrick9 said:
I had forgotten that bit.
He did burn Stephen Hero.
If I remember, I think his sister was there also plunging into the flames.
Joyce was very melodramatic and bipolar (by today's standards) and probably burnt it as a sort of ego boost, knowing they revered his talent almost as much as he.
Reading and stopping Ulysses and picking it back up so many times, I've come to believe, while physically one man wrote it, numerous "sides" to Joyce contributed.
Whatever that means?
I can't imagine what or how he explained parts of it to an editor (if there was one?) but definitely his publisher.
Click to expand...
Do you think an author has to have numerous “sides” — I guess this means more or less robustly developed alternative personalities? — in order to create different characters in depth and detail?
 
Yes. But only as a voyeur.
As a creator there are at least two sides at all times, like a coin, to any piece of work.
It's stable. It's almost always present. I look for it.
When it's not present, it's not present for a purpose.
It's the HOW the writer creates the foundation or structure to the piece.
One side can be called the romanticized side that we think of as a writer (becoming/living these characters).
The other side is what I call the "God" side. -- This side is just as much creative as the first.
THEY HAVE TO MATCH for the coin to be worth anything
Now, there should be at least two coins, so four sides throughout any piece. The second can be clumped in movement/motivation umbrella-understanding.
A clear cut, wonderful example of flipping one of these coins is the prolific science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard.
He created Dianetics which is Fictional Science. That's all he did is flip one of the coins.
I'm going to paraphrase Thomas Wolfe,
"Fiction is truer than fact because fiction is fact rearranged and charged with a purpose."
This is part of the God side.

What I meant by "sides" with Joyce is that, especially with Ulysses, he took
multiple coins (each having two sides) to create and he seems to have no "God sides" to some of the work.
Many of the coins are one sided.
I can't seem to follow Joyce's creational process at all in Ulysses.
It may just be me.
He's not the first, and many after him have done this.
Now what the coins may be is always up to the writer.
I mention Thomas Pynchon. At least with Pynchon, as a storyteller, I can follow his creative process even through many different coins.
And he is by no mean, a simple read.

"Whatever that means" is my way of saying, that I believe Joyce was mentally imbalance. Maybe greatly. He clearly self-medicated with
whiskey and women and lived this way because others didn't know and/or protected him.
He wouldn't be the first writer.
But I don't know. When I read Ulysses, I don't see a master plan that others have tried to tell me, but chaos from a
storyteller's perspective simply for the movement of chaos.
I just don't see it.
But maybe that's the point.
 
I swear that last post makes sense in my head.
Ha!
It's just the things I look for from any creator.
We are all just telling story.
It's how we are made, since cavemen drew pictures on walls.
We love story for a reason, because WE ARE story.

I find four sides to everything and all human beings.
Solomon told them to cut the baby in half, simply because he knew there were four sides
to each professing woman's ownership to that baby.
This is double wisdom. Or two coins as I like to see them.

Now, I just try to see/understand this and take it all the way back to the creator of said story.
I can't seem to do this (at least not wholly) with Ulysses.
The flaws are not with the story (which would enhance the story) but with the creator.
It may be me. We all have limitations.

I have a writer friend who still is trying to convince me (angerly sometimes) Infinite Jest is the first Millennial/internet novel and Wallace foresaw everything.
He loves him some Wallace. And the fact that Wallace killed himself only ballons this needful love of something greater.
I believe we will see what we want to see and that want will become a need.

Stephen Hero was what A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man came from and published posthumously.
They are both beautiful in their flaws. Maybe, simply, because I understand those flaws.

I believe Joyce knew his problems (at least nominally) and that is why Finnegan's Wake, a much simpler structure and read, and better in my opinion, took him a decade and a half to write.

He simply didn't let the "crazy sides" do the creating.
But who am I?
I'm currently writing a screenplay for a two-bit second-rate producer.

Now that I told you about "sides", let me tell you about TPS reports.


I gotta go.
 
VirginiaCavs said:
Do you think an author has to have numerous “sides” — I guess this means more or less robustly developed alternative personalities? — in order to create different characters in depth and detail?
Click to expand...
Now to answer your question without my issues.

No.
It's this simple.
Authors/writers/creators rarely deviate from a winning (usually means $$$) formula. Even if they wanted to, editor, producer or public would not let them.
See King's Misery.

This is how the sausage is made (so turn away if you want to believe the romanticized version).
All characters and their "depth and detail" are researched by the creator to bring out the winning formula.

The formula can be a character, story or agenda. These are the only three possibilities.

The thing with Joyce is, he really wrote the same "type" of way until he didn't.
Dubliners is great in its innocence until Ulysses in its mess.
He really wrote James Joyce until Finnigan's wake.
Everything else was to bring forth one of three possibilities called James Joyce.

Now, when I say research, it could be people he came across/observed in life.

I wrote a short story fifteen years ago about my funeral.
My editor would not place it (he said as a favor to me, which I see now) because
the funeral was attended by not only people from my past (the good/bad/ugly) but also
the characters I created off of them.

Imagine that scene.
(anyone reading this: feel free to use the idea).

It was a strange story.

All this from the word: sides?

Maybe I'm just avoiding the blank page?

Thanks VC
 
I thought about my ramblings from yesterday.

How better or more simply show
the fourth side that I find so rarely in Ulyssess,
is actually found in simplicity.

Joyce instead goes for more complexity as the answer.
And therefore, sides are missing to these coins I look for.
This is a lie to me. A false narrative in the creative process.

Example
A man came to me, "I can't stop cheating on my wife."
I replied, "Do you want to stop?"
"Well, yeah! I hate it. I feel horrible afterwards."
This creative with a God side.
There is the first coin.

In order for me to see the second coin, there's a trick in human nature (or story).
It's not that I say something. It's that I say nothing and the character
(or story structure with a larger coin)
here shows me the second coin.

This can be simple external/internal, but not always.

I stared at the man as if reading his sincerity of heart
and his mouth began gaping like an anxious trout.
He then plowed forward, explaining, in detail,
the women he loved so dearly in intricate ways.
Pinpointing from memory feminine body-parts and
what they do him with a devilish grin.
The imagery made me uncomfortable,
so, I told him, "You actually hate women."

This is the second coin of a very simple fear that is prevalent in human nature.

The fear of not trying/missing a conquest is the same as trying/failing a conquest.

This man was afraid of missing out on a conquest.

Now I can create from this ...
 
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