The Yankees and Mariners played one of the strangest 2 a.m. baseball games in history last night, and there were probably 45 bad beats rolled up into one.
First of all, if you bet on the over, that's just a bad beat in and of itself — especially after the game went to extras, and especially because the Yankees lead the American League in offense.
The pregame total was priced around 7.5, with the under juiced to -108 and the over with -114 vig at FanDuel.
Luis Castillo threw an absolute gem in his home debut as a Mariner, going eight innings with seven strikeouts and just three hits. That outing included two instances in which a runner led off the inning on base (0.86 run expectancy) and two innings in which runners were in scoring position.
Meanwhile, Gerrit Cole had a quality start of his own, going seven innings and allowing just four hits with no runs and eight strikeouts.
Through the first nine innings, the Mariners' best chance to score was after a one-out double by Cal Raleigh in the fifth inning.
This is all to say, if you had the over: sorry.
But most of the shenanigans came in extra innings, into the deep recesses of the night.
It started in the top of the 10th, when the Yankees had runners on first and second with no out. That's a run expectancy of about 64%, or -180 odds.
Then, a botched double steal — a gambit, no doubt — left Andrew Benintendi high and dry in a rundown between second and third base. The Mariners promptly got out of the inning.
Then, with Seattle due up in the bottom with a 62.1% chance to score a run (-165) and a live line approaching -450, it went one-two-three to bring the game to the 11th.
Baserunning blunders again plighted the Yankees in the 11th and 12th. Each inning started with a double play, and both were the result of terrible decisions on the base paths.
The video below encapsulates just how bad the Yankees were on that front.
The Yankees base running last night 😳pic.twitter.com/65EMNEKHTr
— Action Network (@ActionNetworkHQ) August 10, 2022
Still, the Mariners couldn't close it out in the 11th or 12th, needing just a sacrifice fly in the 11th (66%, -200 odds) and a base hit with the bases loaded in the 12th. Seattle was as short as -950 to win this game at certain points in those innings.
In the 13th, the Yankees loaded the bases with one out (77%, -340 odds to score a run) and yet again were unable to get across home.
Then, at roughly 2:17 a.m. ET, Mariners catcher Luis Torrens put everyone out of their misery with a walk-off single to right field.
So, had the Yankees scored in any of the frames in which they made cataclysmic baserunning errors, they would've maintained the best record in the American League. As it stands with the loss, the Yankees are tied for the No. 1 seed with the Astros.
And for Mariners bettors, the bottom of the 10th, 11th and 12th innings were equally as mind-numbing.
So, no one really won in the end. Sports betting is weird.
