Can Luis Arraez Win The NL MVP? | June 9, 2023

numbers told the story they always do. It's one of those idiots who believe in analytics. This is a numbers game with Gil Alexander, gone vis in Tuesday morning too. It is a numbers game in Visadesports Betting Network, Visa dot Com, the Visa app, game, plus iHeartRadio YouTube TV all probably brought you by bet MGM. It's Gil Alexander, It's Kelly Bidlin. And as we're doing this show, there's

all kinds of screens on at the studio. What's this reporter here that had to push somebody out of the way at the game last night?

If you were with us yesterday, Spanky was on with us. Spanky has a new Sports Gambling Hall of Fame that already has three inductees, Billy Walters, Roxy Roxborough, Lefty Rosenthal, the Babe Ruth of Ty Cobb and the Walter Big Train Johnson if you will, of the Sports Gambley Hall of Fame. Christy comes in today to announce the next two names. The next two names on that list, I

believe grand total of ten inductees. I'm not sure, but we will announce inductee number four and five after Billy Walters, Roxy Roxborough and Lefty Rosenthal today on the show, So we look forward to that. And Christy knew him personally, Kelly, that's the difference. He knew them personally, So we should we should absolutely uh be appreciative of that because one day soon we will not have that kind of contact with the legends of sports betting, that's for sure.

been very cool part of our careers. And I will speak for you, but at least from my career coming out here over the past five years, just to associate with guys like Chris and Vinnie and Jimmy right here, no, I mean goes so far back in the history of Vegas and sports betting here into Yeah, to honor the people that came before you that did this kind of stuff is always important real quick here, because we were chuck full of guests and they're gonna stay with us

in some cases for more than one segment, so you and I won't have much time to talk about things like the NBA Draft and.

time is just remarkable to me if you can. Because once again the postseason begins, it's the most random of postseasons, although stats by Lopez says baseball is actually more random. But again, for eighty percent of the favorites to get through in the NHLD, you'd have to play best of fifty ones as opposed to the best of sevens they play in the NBA historically. And you had a Florida Panthers team that was the A seed in the Eastern

Conference who beat the historically great Boston Bruins. They have sixty five wins in the regular season. Then the Toronto Maple Leafs, who came off their first playoff series winsince two thousand and four, and then the Carolina Hurricanes. As any McNeil calls them who Again, when we went round by round and we would ask our hockey experts, like power rank these teams, those were the ones that came up in those rounds. The Vegas Golden Knights were never

that team. So that's also the thing that's interesting is while people will seize on the fact that the Panthers are an eighth seed, and now you'll hear after a two to nothing deficit, a lot of folks are like, wow, I mean they're in AHC. They needed Pittsburgh to lose that final game. Blah blah blah. People forgot about that in the month of in the months of April and May temporarily, now they're back to that with the Vegas

Golden Knights. This was a team that got off to a really hot start along with teams like the Bruins and the Devils and the Hurricanes. But if you just went around town, nobody really thought this was going to be a great team. They were considered the most fraudulent

of those great starting teams. And even when the even with our hockey extress and I'm not disparaging our hockey ectress because I think it's widely held nobody really thought this was the best team around by round either, And yet here we are now and my mother could tell you that they were by far the better team last night.

that good. Bobrovski obviously cleaned up a lot of their weaknesses through the postseason, and I mentioned this to Andy McNeil yesterday, Bobovsky made this unbelievable save early in Game one and you're like, wow, point blank Rangs, They're never going to score him. But by design, the Vegas Golden Knights have tried to figure out how to screen him and take shots from further and it is just worked to a charm. But they're just beating the entire team

at this point. We'll see what our hockey experts have to say about this on the run up to Game three, which is on Thursday. The Golden Knights now minus five fifty five dollars are worth of five dollars to win this series, now Florida north of four dollars on the adjusted series price. You want some of that sort you do? Yeah, kind of. I mean, I know it's hockey.

sports betting element to it. But whenever nerdy baseball stuff collides with sports betting, I love it. And back in the day, I don't know people who have listened to this show long enough, remember when I don't know who it was, Back in twenty seventeen or twenty eighteen, we were talking about MVP and someone was flirting with something historically, I want to say, with the Triple Crown. It never happened.

But the point I was making back then was in twenty twelve, when Miguel Cabrera won the Triple Crown most home runs RBI and average, best batting average in the American League, there was this debate. There was a hot

debate in baseball circles who should win MVP. Should it beat Cabrera who won the Triple Crown, or should it be Mike Trout, who, in all kinds of new fangled metrics, new fangled for most for those of us who bet baseball for a while, wasn't so new fangles for us, but war and waited on base and that kind of thing. Should he have gotten the MVP? And my point at that time was, it had been forty five years since nineteen sixty seven when Carl Yastremsky won the Triple Crown.

He wanted in the American lea for the Boston Red Sox. And if you are a baseball purist or someone who files usport of baseball, the Triple Crown held this mythical status for all of those forty five years. And my point was in twenty twelve, when Miguel Cabrera finally did it after that long of a wait four and a half decades, you had to give him the MVP. Now the next year when it was a Cabrera Trout debate in twenty thirteen, then you can put in your and

no one loves analytics more than I do. Then you can sort of use that as justification for trout. But if you've talked about something that didn't happen for forty five years as this hallowed thing, a triple crown, however arbitrary one might decide that is it was something really valued in baseball circle. So you had to give it to Miguel Cabrera. Enter the year twenty twenty three, and we have the curious case Kelly bin linnov Luis Areas

of the Miami Marlins. The Marlins who are three games above five hundred against all sort of conventional wisdom, a lot of that having to do with their record in one run games. But Ariz got his batting average on a three four day yesterday that included a two bagger to three ninety nine. That's the best over the first sixty one games since two thousand and eight. And Chipper Jones.

Now the question becomes with this, is seventy five to one on him worth a bet in the National League MVP race, which right now has Ronald Acunya Junior as the short shot to win. That of the Atlanta Braves, of course, and by the way, the people at the top are, you know, on teams the usual suspects of Counya Junior Freddy Freeman of the Dodgers, Mookie Bets of the Dodgers, even Pete Alonzo, who has the most home runs in Major League Baseball and I believe is second

in RBI in the National League. Pete Alonzo there at fourteen to one, but you see way down there as aries at seventy five to one, And so the question becomes, is that worth a bet? The point I'm getting at is no one has hit four hundred in Major League Baseball since Ted Williams, who literally wrote the book The Sides of Hitting. No one has hit four hundred since nineteen forty one, when Ted Williams hit four h six. Now, we have had a flirtations with this in the past,

most notably when I was a kid. In nineteen seventy seven, Rod Carew hit three eighty eight and in nineteen eighty George Brett hit three ninety. If you collected baseball cards as a kid back then, you'll remember those. We thought those cards will be, you know, priceless forever. It didn't work out that way with the baseball card market, but anyway, both of those guys won MVP awards back then. Since then, however, the nature of the game has obviously taken many a turn.

We've had a steroid era where guys who did have huge batting averages didn't get the MVP. So in the case of you know, Chipper Jones, who ended up hitting well first of all, Tony Gwynn nineteen ninety four strikes shortened year he hit three ninety four. That's the closest player who's ever gotten to four hundred since then. He did not win the MVP. And yes, they did give out the MVP that year. I mentioned before Larry Walker. I did not mention Larry Walker nineteen ninety nine hit

three seventy nine. He did not win the MVP that year. The best average through sixty one games since Ted Williams hit four hundred and nineteen forty one, Chipper Jones in two thousand and eight four eighteen, Larry Walker in ninety seven, four to sixteen, Paul O'Neil nineteen ninety four to four to eleven, Rod Crew nineteen eighty three, four to eleven, Stan Usual nineteen forty eight, four to eight, on and on.

Luis Ariaz has the tenth highest batting average currently of anybody through sixty one games since Ted Williams did it. And so the point on the seventy five to one I want to mention is you've got to overcome two things. One you gotta figure can he get to four hundred. And the point is that mathematically none of those guys I just mentioned did. Mathematically it is very unlikely for

him to do so. And even if you believed it, even if you believe you know what, Gil I do, think more than one out of seventy five times the rest of the way, Louis Arias, if I ran it through a simulation, would hit four hundred. When all is said and done, Then you would have to get to the part about human beings actually saying yes, hitting the hallowed four hundred would actually get them to vote for

him in this day and age. And I think, because you have both of those two uncertainties, I actually don't think seventy five to one is a good bet. Give me double that before I actually bet.