HOLBROOK NY– Welcome to y favorite week of the year… Masters Week! But there’s other stuff, too. With that, here are today’s topics: Mets Disastrous Start, Masters Picks and Preview, MLB Pitcher Injuries
Mets Disastrous Start
We’re about a week into the 2024 season and the New York Mets are in mid-season form, losing games in as embarrassing fashion as possible. After Luis Severino delivered six solid innings, the Mets led 5-4 going into the 8th inning. After a series of miscues and mind-bogglingly bad defense, the Reds scored 5 in the home half of the 8th. The loss sends the Mets to 2-6 on the season. This is as bad a start to a season as I can ever remember this team having. Francisco Lindor is 1-31 to start the year and frankly the entire offense hasn’t been much better aside from Brett Baty surprisingly enough. At some point the likes of Alonso, McNeil, Lindor, and Nimmo will wake up, they’re too good not too, however as it’s constructed right now this is simply not a roster that’s good enough to compete.
Masters Picks and Preview
Masters Week is finally upon us. Let’s make some picks.
It’s the first major of the 2024 season and with the best players playing on separate tours these days that makes the majors all the more special. Jon Rahm who notably signed with LIV Golf this past winter is the defending champion. While Rahm is certainly capable of defending his title, nobody has repeated as champion since Tiger in 2001-2002 so I’ll cross Rahm off the short list of who I think has a shot to don the Green Jacket.
Brooks Koepka. When Koepka left the PGA tour for LIV in 2022, many thought the oft-injured superstars best days were behind him. Koepka proved in 2023 he’s still among the best in the world, finishing T-2 at the Masters and winning the PGA championship claiming his 5th major title. Koepka has an exceptional track record at Augusta with three top ten finishes including finishing runner-up in 2019 and 2023. I expect Koepka to be in peak form entering Masters week and I think he will without a doubt be be in contention for his first green jacket come Sunday.
Xander Schauffele. The consistent Schauffele enters the week in about as good a form as any player on the planet having finished 5th, 2nd, 25th, and 4th in each of his prior four tournaments. Xander has very quietly finished inside the top 20 in seven consecutive majors and can finally quiet the haters who say he can’t win the big one with a win this week.
Scottie Scheffler. The unquestioned best player in the world enters Augusta having won two of his past three starts. There isn’t much to say, Scheffler is a laughable +400 to win and the only way he doesn’t win his second green jacket is if he putts himself out of the tournament.
Tiger Woods. No, i’m not picking Tiger to win. We haven’t seen him play since withdrawing from the genesis invitational in February. I’m not sure Tiger’s body is capable of competing for four rounds of competitive golf let alone winning the Masters. Of course he’s defied the odds many times and can never truly be counted out, however just making the cut should be considered a success for Tiger this week.
MLB Pitcher Injuries
There’s been a truly bizarre number of elbow injuries to some of baseball’s best pitchers. Braves ace Spencer Strider along with 2020 CY Young winner Shane Bieber will both likely undergo Tommy John surgery and miss the remainder of the 2024 season. Bieber and Strider join a long list of injured pitchers that includes Gerrit Cole, Eury Perez, Jonathan Loisaga, and many others. I have no clue what the cause of this is. I think it’s naive to believe the pitch clock has anything to do with the sudden rash of injuries, however I’ll link a very interesting video below where Dodgers SP Tyler Glasnow two years ago discusses the ban of foreign substances pitchers could use on the mound.
https://x.com/notnate99/status/1776795267636809941?s=42&t=phOIcKfuulHTeh1pCfLyGg
