Pinnacle -½ +196 BET365 -½ +185 SportsInteraction -½ +180 BetOnline -½ +189 Bookmaker -½ +185

Posted at 5:00 PM EST. 

Arizona -1½ +196 over COLORADO

8:40 PM EST. The Coors Field angle is back in play this weekend and it starts off with Seth Frankoff (RHP - ARI) facing German Marquez (RHP - COL).

Frankoff is a big-framed, four-pitch journeyman with fringe-average stuff and solid command who has some fading swingman reps left in the tank. Boy, you talk about a dude that’s playing with house money and one need not look further than Frankoff. He’ll go out there, try his ass off and not give a fuck what happens because he has overpaid his dues. They may even make a movie about this guy one day. The 32-year-old is back in the majors for the first time since 2017 when he pitched two innings with the Cubs in his only big league appearance. He was originally drafted by Oakland in the 27th round in 2010. Since then, he’s experienced quite a career in different organizations and even another country. After the Athletics released him in 2016, he signed with the Dodgers before ending up with the Cubs for the 2017 season. The Mariners then claimed him on waivers, but Frankoff never pitched in that organization after being released. He then signed with Doosan in Korea where he pitched for two years. The Padres inked him in February 2020 and then he returned to the Mariners just a few weeks ago. Frankoff has been told to fuck-off more than once but he keeps coming back.

Fading the Rockies while taking back a tag like this cannot be a bad thing. Since the beginning of baseball, bad teams have spoken their own language. When the traditional appeal to the paying customer—come watch your favorite baseball team win a baseball game at the baseball stadium—no longer holds water, marketing departments have to get creative. There’s your usual “watch the kids play” appeal, or the more modern “come eat a three-pound hot dog somewhat close to a live baseball game.” But there’s something that every team, no matter how bereft of talent, can advertise: hunger. Desire. “Watch these career minor leaguers fight every day to maintain a liveable wage.” If you can’t sell winning, you can always sell trying.

Perhaps that’s what causes the position player pitcher to rankle so badly, once the novelty wears thin: It’s not the amateurism, or even the ugliness. It’s the insinuation that the team is no longer trying, no longer willing to expend the one resource that every team is supposed to have in equal measure, effort. This may not hold true in the stale heat of August, when the aches have begun to overlap each other and the entire sport, for some teams, starts to take on that comfortable mediocrity of a misspent life. But this is May. We are not dying yet. Except the Rockies. The Rockies are dying young. At 15-29, the Rocks possess the worst record in the league, and their star shortstop is wrapping up his prison sentence. Once he’s traded, Jon Gray alone will remain, acting as a sliver to remind fans what his generation might have done. it’s not actually that easy to distinguish between the mental mistakes and the plain old physical ones. They both count the same in the box score. “Come to Colorado this summer, and watch some young men get their spirit broken,” the ads will say. “Don’t forget to buy a shirt in the gift store”. The Rockies are losing ugly and today they’re priced like they’re the Dodgers.

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