The Key for the week of June 9, 2025
The Reds in Their American League Era
It took a sweep of the Arizona Diamondbacks, but the Reds are back at .500 after a weekend series that saw a monster performance by just-back-from-injury Christian Encarnacion-Strand. CES hit three home runs in three games after coming off the injured list on Friday, and gave us all a glimpse of what could have been if he would have been healthy over the last season and a half.
Now the Reds hit the road for the other half of the home-and-home Ohio Cup series with Cleveland, stay north for a series at Detroit then come home to Minnesota in a long AL Central stay. This next month before the All-Star break is critical, because it can set the tone as to whether the Reds will be buyers or sellers as the trade deadline gets closer.
OKC Makes It a Series
The NBA Finals head to Indiana “playing with house money” as Tyrese Haliburton said. Any time the road team can come away with a split, it makes things much more interesting. OKC’s big win in Game 2 keeps the Thunder as heavy favorites in the best of 7, but here’s a fun fact: In 70.1% of the NBA Finals, the team that wins the first game has won the championship. Don’t count out Indiana, they’ve been underdogs this entire playoff.
We’re on to Wimbledon
It’ll be hard for the All-England Tennis Club to beat what happened this past weekend on the clay at Roland Garros, but the grass court season is upon us. The tours head to the Netherlands for the Rosmalen Grass Court Championships this week to get ready for Wimbledon in less than a month. That comes after two spectacular singles finals this weekend, with Coco Gauff becoming the first American female to win at Roland Garros in a decade (after dropping the first set) and Carlos Alcaraz coming back from two sets down to win over Jannik Sinner in an instant classic that went a marathon 5 hours and 29 minutes, the longest final in French Open history and second longest in Grand Slam history.
Ben’s Best Bet
Edmonton is giving Gretzky-era vibes in this Stanley Cup final, while Florida looks to defend its championship in a rematch of last year’s finals. Another fun fact: The team that wins Game 1 of the Stanley Cup final wins the Cup more than 76% of the time. Edmonton won that first game in OT, but Florida avoided the road sweep in a Game 2 double overtime thriller. BetMGM has the Panthers as favorites in either five or six games—Ben says the Panthers’ win in Edmonton was huge in their effort to repeat and because of that, it’s easy to take Florida to win the Stanley Cup once again.