There needs to be a new national law about holidays. Thursday was Independence Day, and I hope you all had an enjoyable one, but as so often happens when a national holiday falls on a weekday, I'm all out of sorts. It's like I'm suffering from a holiday version of jet lag.
Today is Friday, but shouldn't it be Sunday? Or maybe even Monday? Yesterday sure felt like a weekend day, and I sure treated it as one, yet here I am, back to work because it's a Friday.
So what I'm proposing is that any time a national holiday falls somewhere between Tuesday and Thursday (I do not include the Monday holidays because those are all treated as three-day weekends already), we should all have the rest of that week off work. It's the right thing to do.
Think of how awesome it will be during those years when Independence Day falls on a Tuesday, and we all get six-day weekends. That's the kind of freedom we should be celebrating.
If the President or one of the 500 Democratic hopefuls are reading this, I just handed you the White House in 2020.
All odds are via William Hill.
1. Philadelphia Phillies at New York Mets: Over 8.5
I've made this pick here before for all the same reasons I'm making it here now. Baseballs are flying out of parks at ridiculous rates this season, which is increasing scoring. With Jacob deGrom on the mound for the Mets in this matchup, the total is set a little too low for the reality of the situation. The fact that it's supposed to be warm and humid with winds blowing out to left-center doesn't hurt, either. deGrom might be deGrom, but with Vince Velasquez on the mound for Philly, I guarantee we're going to see some bombs hit in this one.
DFS millionaire Mike McClure is off to a hot start in 2019, producing lineups on SportsLine that have returned as much as 30x. He's back on Friday building his optimal DFS lineups for tournament play, and you can get them all at SportsLine.
2. Los Angeles Angels at Houston Astros: Angels +175
Justin Verlander is one of the best pitchers in baseball, and what makes him one of the best is his ability to strike hitters out. His strikeout rate of 32.1 percent is 9.8 percent higher than the league average of 22.8 percent. The reason I like the Angels at this price, however, is that no team strikes out less than the Angels do. As a team, the Angels have a strikeout rate of 17.3 percent. That's 5.5 percent below league average. So this is one of those times when Something Has Got To Give, and I think it gives often enough for the Angels side to justify taking the Halos at this price.
David Sumpter's mathematical model has netted a mind-blowing 2,000 percent return on the Premier League since its inception. Now, it's revealed its picks for Sunday's championship matchup between the USA and Netherlands. Find out who has the betting edge over at SportsLine.
3. Indiana Fever at Dallas Wings: Under 149
When these two met earlier this season, I advised you to take the under, and it paid off. They combined for 148 points in that game, close to the total here. I still like the under again for the same reasons I liked it then. Indiana has an efficient offense and a very inefficient defense, but it moves at one of the slowest paces in the WNBA, which limits overall possessions. Then there are the Wings, who are inefficient offensively, pretty average defensively, and move at a slower pace than the Fever do. Points may not be hard to come by overall, but neither team moves quick enough, so I see value on this under side of this total.
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