An Ode to Opening Day
April 10, 2015Indians promote Jerry Sands, option Austin Adams ahead of home opener
April 10, 2015Six weeks ago now, WFNY introduced the Cleveland Sports Championship Watch, a recurring post to update the Northeast Ohioan masses of when their long and agonizing wait for a title could come to an end. WFNY will track the Title Ticker throughout the year, gleaning every insight and nugget of valuable information that can be gleaned from such patently unreliable information. The projections are based on the odds disseminated by Vegas and dictated by the betting public. It is an inexact science — but a science nonetheless (at least as much as any of those pansy “soft” sciences like sociology or anthropology). The last update was March 27, and, like flossing, two weeks seems like a reasonable break. Here’s your Cleveland Sports Championship Watch for April 10, 2015, starting with the Title Ticker.
The Browns (unsurprisingly, I might add) have the exact same odds as when we first checked in on their championship prospects. Rumors swirl around the look of the impending remake of the Browns uniforms, but other than that the most exciting improvement made upon Northeast Ohio’s NFL franchise was the signing of tight end Rob Housler. But the NFL draft nears, and WFNY will be here until then to say (or let you say) a thing or two about that. In other news, the monsters at the NFL saw fit to kill a great American tradition and everlasting symbol of futility, the Great Lakes Classic. The yearly preseason date with the Detroit Lions going back to 2002 is apparently no more after the release of the Browns preseason schedule.
Although the Browns remained locked-in as Super Bowl long shots at 100:1 odds, there was some feel-good news from Cleveland’s most feel-bad franchise: Joe Haden invited a girl to prom on behalf of a high school student (which was super aww-some), and Johnny Manziel visited a young girl in the hospital, so read this and discover a new kind of Browns-related weeping.
Baseball season kicked off (err, well, opened) at long last, hopefully signaling a breath of fresh air for the local weather and the sports scene. The Indians wasted a quality start from Corey Kluber in a 2-0 opener loss in Houston to the Astros, but finished the series with some gusto, winning in its last two games in Texas and nearly pitching a platoon no-hitter on Thursday afternoon. In a surprising development, the strong series from the Tribe starters moved their World Series odds from 25:1 to 20:1. This was the third biggest jump in the MLB since the last Championship Watch, and puts the Indians in a tie with two other times as the ninth most likely champion.
But Opening Day is on Friday, so go celebrate one of the most glorious days of the year with some friends, some hot dogs, some beers, and some antacid tablets. Our first intel from The Corner and the Progressive Field renos looks promising, but apparently self-serve beer dispensers and Barrio tacos don’t make the Indians any more likely to win a pennant. (But we urge readers to try, just in case.)
Meanwhile, the Cavaliers are lapping at the door of the playoffs, anxiously waiting for them to begin, and things are happening in the NBA’s title picture. After lying mostly dormant throughout the season, the Warriors’ championship odds surged from +300 to +160, overtaking the Cavaliers who dipped slightly to +200. This sudden shift is slightly counterintuitive. The Cavs were the favorites all season, even when things were at their bleakest. Now — with the Cavs going 32-7 over their last 39 games — now the Warriors overtake them as the favorites.
Vegas and the public are subject to whimsy, sure, but does the move to suddenly favor the Warriors — when they outplayed the Cavaliers from October to January and have played evenly with the Cavaliers since — hint at something more? With three games remaining, the Warriors could possibly reach the 67-win mark in the regular season, an achievement only nine other teams have accomplished in NBA history. Sixty-seven wins would be the most since the 2006-07 Dallas Mavericks, and would allow the Warriors to join our own 66-win 2008-09 Cavaliers (as well as the 2012-13 Miami Heat) as the best regular season teams since. Perhaps breaching that elusive 67-win barrier resonate with odds makers and bettors who dismissed the Warriors as good-but-not-great all season until now. The sudden change of heart is perplexing, though.
But even the Cavs-Warriors battle for the pole position seems secondary to what should be the main playoff story: the annual early-spring revival of the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs are playing the best basketball in the NBA at present, boasting a ludicrous 15.3 net rating since the start of March. They’re the most frightening team in the NBA, the Zombie Team that just won’t stay dead. It’s dumbfounding that the Spurs are still behind the Cavs and Warriors for the top spot: there is no team in the NBA who wants to play San Antonio in the playoffs. Nevertheless, they have pulled within arms length of the Cavs at +360 odds to win the Finals, making it a three-team race as far as odds makers are concerned. The next closest team to the Warriors-Cavs-Spurs trio is the Atlanta Hawks at a distant 15:1. All told, there’s an astounding 84.2 (!!!) percent chance that either the Cavs, Warriors, or Spurs win the NBA Finals.
If only the Warriors and Spurs could kill each other in a Mexican standoff, then the Cavs would be the overwhelming favorites to win the NBA title. But between the Cavs, Indians, and Browns (well, the Cavs and Indians, anyway), there’s a 33.6 percent chance that Cleveland sports fans won’t be waiting until next year. And, to hijack a line from the Hunger Games, may the odds be forever in our favor.