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Posted at 10:30 AM EST.

7:10 PM EST. The “Coors Field” angle originated right here, as we created it and explained it to our readers at the beginning of last year. The angle is very simply to play the underdog on the alternate run-line at Coors Field because there is not a single pitcher that is immune to the extreme park factors in Denver that make it such a hitter’s park. With Colorado being around a .500 team, the dog is likely to win there almost as much as the favorite and that was proven last year and in a small sample size this year so far. We’re now going to take that angle and apply it to other games as well, especially when said game is at an extreme hitter’s park like this one here.

The Mets and Reds will open up a three-game series and both come in cold. The Reds just dropped two of three at home to the Marlins, they’ve lost five of their last six and they are a pathetic 8-26 thus far. The season is barely six weeks old and the Cincinnati Reds are already out of it but this team isn’t as bad as its record. They have some bats and some excellent everyday players but its pitching was expected to be shaky and it is, which brings us to today’s starter, Homer Bailey (RHP).

Bailey showed flashes of his former high-upside self early in 2018 (3.42 ERA, 1.06 WHIP in his first 23 inning) but underneath those stats were a collection of mediocre skills and it caught up to him. Bailey now has a 4.81 ERA after 39 frames to go along with a weak 22 K’s. Bailey throws strikes but his swinging strike rate is just 7%. He’ll now come into this start with a 0-4 record and a 6.89 ERA over his last three starts. He may or may not get torched here but he’ll be facing a Mets’ team that is colder than this year’s opening day weather, as New York has scored two runs or less in five of its past six games and was shut out three times over that span too and they did not face an elite starter in any of those games. We’ll live with whatever Bailey delivers because this wager is all about fading the reeling Mets and their rookie starter.

New York just got swept at home by the Rockies to run their losing streak to six games. They’re also the walking wounded, as Yoenis Cespedes joins a slew of other players on the rack, thus forcing the team to prematurely call-up guys that are not major-league ready, which brings us to today’s starter, P.J. Conlon (LHP)

Irish eyes are smiling at the Mets. They have called up Patrick Joshua Conlon, born along the Falls Road in Belfast, Northern Ireland to an Irish father and a Scottish mother, who moved with his family to California as a boy to escape the Troubles. Upon starting Monday night’s game, he’ll become the first Irish-born MLB player in more than 70 years, and the first Belfast native in a century, a throwback to baseball’s early origins as a game largely played by immigrants, many from Ireland and Great Britain.

Conlon is frankly more interesting in what he represents to the global game than what he reads out as on a scouting report. A 13th-round pick in 2015 from the University of San Diego, he’s your prototypical undersized, low-velocity college lefty who ate much of the minors up with advanced fastball command and a plus changeup. His video game-like A-ball stats got him some helium as a prospect in 2016, but at the end of the day, he usually tops out around 88-90 mph without a lot of movement, and he’s never found a consistent breaking ball. If this all sounds like Jason Vargas, well, you aren’t far off, but there are a lot more pitchers who don’t make the Vargas profile work in the majors than pitchers who do. The Mets have toyed with converting Conlon to relief over the past year—he was a legitimate roster candidate this spring for a second lefty bullpen spot that ended up not existing—and he’s had a rough go in five starts so far in Triple-A Las Vegas this year. Realistically, he’s up less on merit and more because he was the last plausible candidate standing to make a spot start after the strange (mis?)handling of Jacob deGrom’s elbow injury. While this is a story worth rooting for, underneath it all, this is a desperate plug and play move by the Mets and chances are this kid gets lit up big time at this park by some major-league bats.

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