In today’s SportSense Entertainment Newsletter…

There were plenty of predictions to go around yesterday across the MLB, with our model focusing in on one of those predictions and making it a 3-star play. That prediction went 1-0 overall, and you can see how each of the models performed below.

Money Line Predictions: 5-3

Over/Under Predictions: 4-2-2

Run Line Predictions: 5-3

3-star Predictions: 1-0

🍻 The Denver Nuggets had themselves a day. The Denver Nuggets won the 2023 NBA Finals on Monday, the franchise’s first NBA title. As a result, the Nuggets and their fans partied all throughout the streets of Denver during the championship parade on Thursday, providing fans with some entertaining moments. Christian Braun was seen tossing beer to fans and chugging champagne, Mike Malone gave the speech of a lifetime, and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope did his best Stone Cold Steve Austin impression on top of the team bus. As everyone knows, anything goes when you win a championship in professional sports, and the Nuggets certainly made the most of the celebration.

🏜 CP3 wants to remain with Phoenix next season. The Phoenix Suns allegedly told Chris Paul that he would be waived prior to the offseason officially beginning, but the veteran point guard hopes that he will be able to stay with the team. If the Suns waive Paul before June 28th they will owe him $15.8 million, nearly half the amount they would owe him if he remained on the team for the 2023-24 season. Even if he is waived, it is still a possibility Chris Paul returns to the Suns, but it would be on a deal worth significantly less money. Paul is coming off a season to forget, averaging a career-low 13.9 points per game after dealing with several injuries during the regular season and postseason.

💰 Jesper Bratt signs deal to stay with Devils. The New Jersey Devils and restricted free-agent Jesper Bratt reportedly agreed to an 8-year, $63 million contract on Thursday. The deal makes Bratt the third highest paid player on the Devils by average annual value ($7.875 million), coming in just behind Jack Hughes ($8 million) and Dougie Hamilton ($9 million). The winger has played a massive role for the Devils, who made the playoffs for the first time since 2018 last season, scoring a career-high 32 goals and tallying 73 total points in the 2022-23 season.

🤕 Ethan Bear to miss six months after shoulder surgery. Vancouver Canucks defenseman Ethan Bear is expected to miss up to six months after undergoing successful shoulder surgery this offseason, per the Canucks team Twitter account. Bear suffered the injury while representing his home country, Canada, in the IIHF World Championships. He was acquired by Vancouver from the Carolina Hurricanes in October, tallying 16 points in 61 appearances for the Canucks last season.

🔄 Erik Karlsson, San Jose agree on idea of a trade. We don’t often see a player request a trade and the front office be all for it, but that appears to be the case for Erik Karlsson and the San Jose Sharks. Due to Karlsson wanting to play for a contender and the Sharks looking to rebuild, a trade involving the seven-time All-Star is almost guaranteed to happen. Karlsson scored 25 goals and dished out 76 assists for San Jose in 2023, making him a hot commodity on the trade market.

There are 15 MLB games scheduled to take place today. However, due to some gaps in the season data and lines not being available at the time the models were run, our model has predictions for ten of today’s matchups.

Baltimore Orioles @ Chicago Cubs

Model Predicts- Cubs ML, OVER 7.5, Cubs +1.5

The Baltimore Orioles and Chicago Cubs will begin a three-game series this afternoon in the Windy City.

Baltimore enters today’s matchup with a 43-25 record, good enough for second place in the loaded American League East. The Orioles have also won six of their last seven games, making them one of the hottest teams in baseball.

Chicago is far away from Baltimore in terms of record, sitting in fourth in the AL Central at 31-37 record. However, the Cubs are winners of three straight games, a sign of building momentum.

Both of these teams have found the win column several times this week, but our model gives the Cubs an edge at home this afternoon. Will that prediction come to fruition, or will we see the Orioles get their 44th win of the season?

Baltimore Orioles

The Baltimore Orioles have done a ton of damage at the plate this season, a big reason why the O’s find themselves only a handful games back of the Tampa Rays in the division.

According to Fangraphs, Baltimore enters today’s matchup against Chicago with a 107 wRC+, good enough for seventh in the MLB. That is a sign of a great hitting attack, one is putting up above average numbers across several major categories, including Barrel rate (8.8%), expected batting average (.251), and Hard Hit rate (40.5%), per Baseball Savant.

We’ve seen just how good this offense can be over the course of its last seven games, a stretch where the Orioles are 6-1 and own a +22 run differential. In that time we’ve seen Baltimore’s wRC+ spike to 147, the highest in the MLB, while simultaneously posting a .358 BABIP (batting average on balls in play).

There is no doubt that Baltimore is red hot at the plate, but they will likely need every ounce of offense they can get today with Cole Irvin (1-2 record, 7.86 ERA) set to make the start for the Orioles.

Cole Irvin has only pitched 18.1 innings this season, so the sample size isn’t all that large. However, early indications are that he is one of the worse starting pitchers in the major leagues. Irvin’s 7.86 ERA is already high, but Baseball Savant lists his xERA at an abysmal 8.41, showing that he has been worse than what the surface level numbers indicate. Those numbers result from ranking in the bottom 10% in Whiff rate as well as the bottom 1% in xBA (.347).

Chicago Cubs

Kyle Hendricks (1-2 record, 3.09 ERA) will make the start today for Chicago. The 33-year-old has only started four games in 2023 after missing the first month and a half of the season, but he appears to be trending in an upward direction.

Hendricks is coming off a start in which he threw 8.0 innings, allowing just one hit and zero runs against the San Francisco Giants, a team that ranks inside the top ten in both runs and hits per game.

That performance was just one of the many great showings that Hendricks has had over his career, but Hendricks does have some flaws on the mound. He is only striking out 16.0% of the batters he is facing this season, putting him in the bottom 12% of the majors. Additionally, Hendricks isn’t much of a threat when it comes to overpowering opposing hitters, with his fastest pitch coming in at just 87.6 mph.

That means that Hendricks is often relying on soft contact to be made in order to generate outs, and that is exactly what has happened across 23.1 innings. Baseball Savant has Hendricks ranked in the top 17% of the majors in Hard Hit rate at 33.3%, down from 38.9% a season ago. He also has a tremendous amount of control, walking only 6.4% of batters.

What’s the Play?

Both starting pitchers have their flaws, and Hendricks’ 4.50 xERA begins to raise some red flags. However, we agree with our model that the Cubs can sneak away with a win against a better Orioles team this afternoon.

The low rate of hard contact for Hendricks is going to be the difference maker. His two main pitches are a sinker and changeup, both of which own a Hard Hit rate below 35% and a Barrel rate below 5.0%. Opposing hitters can’t seem to size those pitches up, and that will go a long way in slowing down a hot Orioles offense.

Meanwhile, Irvin owns a much wider arsenal of pitches, but three of his four most thrown pitches have resulted in an xBA above .320. There is a great chance we see the Cubs, a team that is batting .264 with a .770 OPS against left-handed pitchers, feast on those pitches.

We feel that a streaking Cubs team that has the advantage on the mound can win this one. Our model thinks Chicago should be favored with odds of -120, so we’ll take the Cubs at -105.

3-star play: Cubs ML (-105)

Money Line Trends💰

• Chicago Cubs- 31-37 overall this season, 18-16 as the home team

• New York Yankees- 39-30 overall this season, 9-9 as a road underdog

• Tampa Bay Rays- 50-22 overall this season, 19-15 as the away team

Over/Under Trends ⬆️⬇️

• Chicago Cubs- Over is 34-33-1 this season, 18-15-1 as the home team

• Texas Rangers- Over is 39-25-4 this season, 21-9-4 as the home team

• San Diego Padres- Under is 43-23-2 this season, highest win percentage in MLB

Run Line Trends➕➖

• Washington Nationals- Run line is 40-27 overall this season, 12-7 against division opponents (Play NL East rival Miami today)

• Oakland Athletics- Run line is 31-40 overall this season, 8-1 in last nine games

Various injuries around the league. See full injury report on MLB.com.

🎉 Tampa Bay becomes first team to 50 wins. The Tampa Bay Rays have been the most dominant team in baseball in 2023, becoming the first team to win 50 games after a 4-3 victory over the Oakland Athletics on Thursday. Luke Raley hit the go-ahead home run in the top of the eighth inning in yesterday’s matchup, catapulting Tampa Bay back in front after Oakland tied the game in the bottom of the fifth. The Rays will have a chance to be back in the win column for the third game in a row tonight when a three-game series against the Padres begins.

✍️ Nevada Governor signs public funding bill for A’s new stadium. Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo signed a $380 million public financing package into law yesterday, setting the stage for the Oakland Athletics’ move to Las Vegas. The total cost of the stadium, which will have a retractable roof and sit near the Raiders’ and Vegas Golden Knights’ stadiums, is projected to be in the neighborhood of $1.50 billion. However, the maximum capacity in the stadium is just 30,000, making it the MLB’s smallest. Protests have been held all throughout Oakland this week in an attempt to keep the A’s in the city, but those attempts clearly went unnoticed by the people calling the shots.

💥 Shohei Ohtani has stellar night on the mound and at the plate. Two-way star Shohei Ohtani continued his tremendous season on the mound and at the plate last night in a 5-3 victory over the Texas Rangers. Ohtani went 6.0 innings on the mound, surrendering only six hits and two runs against the MLB’s best offense. He also went 1-2 at the plate with two walks and a home run, putting him into a tie for the most home runs in the majors in 2023. Last night’s victory was the eighth in the last ten games for Los Angeles, making them one of the league’s hottest teams heading into a series with the Royals.

⛳️ Records were broken left and right at the U.S Open on Thursday. The 123rd U.S Open began less than 24 hours ago, but we have already seen several records get shattered. Rickie Fowler and Xander Schauffele both shot 8-under par in Round 1 on Thursday, setting the record for the lowest round of golf in U.S. Open history. Schauffele put up eight birdies in the round compared to Fowler’s 10, another U.S. Open record for Fowler, and the record breaking didn’t stop there. The average score in Round 1 was 71.34, the lowest average in U.S. Open history, and it will also be the first time that no player in the field shot above 80 in the first two rounds.

👀 J.K. Dobbins sits out of mandatory minicamp. Running backs all around the NFL are voicing their displeasure with contract negotiations, and Baltimore Ravens running back J.K. Dobbins is now one of the many to sit on the sidelines during minicamp. Dobbins, who is entering the last season of his rookie deal, reportedly showed up to the Ravens facility, but was not seen on the field during any of Baltimore’s practices. We already saw how long it took for Lamar Jackson to squeeze money out of the Ravens, so we think it is going to be tough for an injury-riddled Dobbins to tip the scales in his favor after missing all of 2021 with a torn ACL and playing just eight games last season.

⚽️ Gregg Berhalter back as USMNT head coach. The United States Men’s National Soccer Team has been searching for a head coach for all of 2023, but the team ultimately decided to keep Gregg Berhalter at the helm, per Paul Tenorio. Despite leading the USMNT to the round of 16 at the 2022 World Cup, U.S. Soccer allowed Berhalter’s contract to expire in December. That decision was made after a domestic violence allegation involving Berhalter was brought back into the spotlight, but an investigation revealed that he was in the clear and as a result was welcomed back to the bench.

Today’s trivia requires you to dig into multiple pockets of your brain, testing your knowledge of recent events as well as those that happened decades ago.

See how many of the below questions you can get correct. Answers are provided at the end of the newsletter.

Question #1- Kevin Durant took the NBA by storm after being selected second overall by the Seattle Supersonics in the 2007 NBA Draft. His 6’10 frame allowed him to tower over many of the NBA’s best perimeter defenders, leading to Durant winning four scoring titles in his career. How many of those scoring titles came in Duran’t first five seasons?

Question #2- The four-minute mile is one of the hardest barriers to crack in track and field, with fewer than 2,000 people having done so. Who was the first person to break the four-minute mile barrier?

Question #3- Soldier Field, home of the Chicago Bears, is the oldest stadium belonging to an NFL team. The Bears began playing at Soldier Field in 1971, however, it has been around for much longer than that. What year was Soldier Field first opened?

Anyone know what has happened on June 16th throughout history? We didn’t have a clue either, but it appears that it has been a busy day.

On June 16th…

1975- The Milwaukee Bucks trade Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Walt Wesley to the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers received Elmore Smith, Brian Winters, Dave Meyers, Junior Bridgeman, and cash in the deal. Kareem would dominate in a Lakers uniform from day one, averaging 27.7 points, 16.9 rebounds, and 4.12 blocks per game in his first season after the trade. He also won his fourth MVP that season, the first player in Lakers franchise history to win the award, despite the Lakers ending the season with a 40-42 record.

1993- Ken Griffey Jr. hits his 100th home run in a Seattle Mariners uniform in a 6-1 victory over the Kansas City Royals. The Kid became the fourth youngest player to reach the century mark in home runs, accomplishing the feat at the age of 23 years old. Only Mel Ott, Eddie Matthews, and Tony Conigliaro have hit 100 home runs faster than Griffey Jr.

1996- The Chicago Bulls defeat the Seattle Supersonics 4-2 in a best-of-seven series to win the NBA title, with Michael Jordan winning his fourth Finals MVP. The 1996 Chicago Bulls were arguably the greatest team the NBA has ever seen, winning 72 of 82 regular season games that season. The 72 wins were the most by any team in the regular season in NBA history at the time, but Seattle wasn’t too far behind, ending the 1995-96 season with 64 wins. Chicago and Seattle had 136 combined wins that season, setting a new NBA Finals record.

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1. 3

2. Roger Bannister

3. 1924