CREATED BY SPORTS BETTORS FOR SPORTS BETTORS
LET’S HEAR YOUR STORY
Up until about three weeks ago, it was the Texas Rangers' year.
A combination of prodigious free-agent spending and prospect development had given them baseball's best lineup, coupled with a rotation recently topped out by three-time Cy Young winner Max Scherzer. They were up 3.5 games in competitive AL West, with the best run differential in the AL and on pace for their best regular-season record ... ever.
Those days fully faded into memory Wednesday, when the Houston Astros completed an unholy shellacking of their in-state rivals destined for the record books.
With Scherzer on the mound for the Rangers, the Astros took the series finale 12-3 on the road, after winning 13-6 on Monday and 14-1 on Tuesday. Without context, it might have been the most dominant series sweep by any team this season.
With context, it was hard not to see a team gleefully nailing down the coffin lid of an upstart rival.
The Astros made MLB history with three straight games of at least five homers each, joining the 2020 New York Yankees, 2019 Yankees and 1977 Boston Red Sox as the only teams with such a streak, per MLB.com's Sarah Langs. Their 16 homers in that span is tied for the second-most in MLB history, behind only the same 2020 Yankees. Keep in mind what kind of ball MLB was using in 2019 and 2020.
Of those homers, Jose Altuve had five (three on Tuesday alone) while Mauricio Dubón, Martin Maldonado, Yordan Álvarez and José Abreu all had two.
It's not like the Astros caught the Rangers at the bottom of their rotation either. Andrew Heaney, one of the Rangers' big free agency acquisitions last winter, started Monday. Nathan Eovaldi, an All-Star this season and another free agent signing, started Tuesday. Scherzer, the big splash of the trade deadline, started Wednesday.
The trio combined to allow 14 earned runs. Scherzer was responsible for half of them, coming up well short in a hyped duel between him and his teammate of two months ago, Justin Verlander.
If the Rangers were going to turn around their season after losing eight straight games and the division lead at the end of last month, this would have been the series to do it. Instead, they were humiliated and pushed to third place in a division they led for the first 4 1/2 months of the season.
The 76-63 Rangers now sit three games back from the Astros in the AL West, with the second-place Seattle Mariners (one game back) between them.
It's tempting to say they get a reprieve with their next series, a three-game home set against the last-place Oakland Athletics, but the A's have more than twice as many wins (10) as the Rangers (four) over the last three weeks.
Daniel Weinman was crowned winner of the 2023 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event on Monday, taking home a record breaking $12.1 million in winnings. Weinman had to outlast the other 10,043 entrants to take home the prize and get his hands on his share of live poker’s largest ever prize pool – a staggering $93,399,900. As well as taking home the prize money, 35-year-old Weinman also got his hands on the WSOP Main Event bracelet. The huge bracelet contains 500 grams of 10-karat yellow gold, as well as 2,352 various precious gemstones.
Daniel Weinman won the World Series of Poker's main event world championship on Monday in Las Vegas, earning $12.1 million along the way. Playing in the tournament for a 16th year, Weinman was tops in a deep pool of 10,043 players vying for $93.39 million. His victory came after just 164 hands at the final table. "I was honestly on the fence about even coming back and playing this tournament," the 35-year-old Atlanta native told reporters afterward. Weinman's final table featured Jan-Peter Jachtmann, who landed in fourth place and took home $3 million, as well as Toby Lewis, who finished seventh and secured $1.42 million. According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the main event's entry pool far outpaced the previous record of 8,773 set in 2006. "I've always kind of felt that poker was kind of going in a dying direction, but to see the numbers at the World Series this year has been incredible," Weinman said. "And to win this main event, it doesn't feel real. I mean, [there's] so much luck in a poker tournament. I thought I played very well." Steven Jones finished second, securing $6.5 million. And Adam Walton settled for third and a $4 million prize.
Your experience on this site will be improved by allowing cookies.
