The Key for the week of May 27
The Memorial Day Benchmark
They say (and you know who “they” are) that in baseball, once a team hits the Memorial Day holiday, you get a good sense of just what this team will do for the rest of the season. If you use that measuring stick, the Reds will spend the rest of the season hovering around the .500 mark, hovering around the middle of the NL Central, and not that much different from last year. However, you might remember that the Reds had a post-Memorial Day surge last year, including a seven-game win streak that put the team in Wild Card contention (if Wild Cards were picked in the middle of the summer).
Can Reds fans hope for a similar surge this year? The team wraps up a weekend series at the Cubs to start the month, then will face the Brewers and Diamondbacks at home before a series of American League opponents, including the Guardians, Tigers and Twins. That all comes before the Cardinals on the road and the Yankees back home. Can the Reds beat the injury bug and make another June charge? Stay tuned—this stretch before the All-Star Game may tell us everything we need to know about the Reds.
Speaking of Injuries…
FC Cincinnati’s Nick Hagglund can’t catch a break—oh, wait, he just did, two breaks in fact, two broken ribs against Atlanta away from the ball. Not just broken ribs, though, one punctured his lung. You might remember almost a year ago Hagglund suffered a season-ending ankle injury. The subsequent loss to Atlanta knocked the Orange and Blue out of first place in the conference behind Philadelphia, with matches this week at home against Dallas and DC United.
The Caitlin Clark Non-Effect
With the Indiana Fever’s Caitlin Clark out for a couple of weeks (probably four games) with a quad injury, it’ll be interesting to see how the WNBA responds attendance-wise, especially since some of the upcoming Fever games had been moved by the home team to larger venues. The matchups include two with the Mystics (one on the road, one in Indiana), a game with the Connecticut Sun and a rematch with the Chicago Sky. Is the WNBA popular because of its play, or because of Clark? The next couple of weeks will tell us.
Ben’s Best Bet
The French Open got under way this week at Roland Garros, and as tennis said goodbye to clay courts king Rafa Nadal, a new crop of young, exciting tennis stars is taking the stage. Right now, defending champion Carlos Alcaraz is the strong favorite to repeat, with Jannik Sinner right behind. On the women’s side, Aryna Sabalenka is favored with defending champion Iga Swiatek second favorite and American Coco Gauff the next in line. Ben says don’t be surprised if Gauff puts together a run in Paris—she’s already won eight tournaments this year, and Ben says it would be worth an investment on Gauff to win it all on the red clay.