Our Chattanooga futures hit. The baseball isn’t having a good week, but our Chattanooga futures hit. Big reset for the effort.
NL Central
Not a great start to the year for the Pirates, but the point is value, and there’s narrow value at this price. This gives us at least something on thirteen different teams, which isn’t a bad place to start the year.
Pick: Pittsburgh to win +1200. 2.00 units to win 24.00.
ALCS
With no value available on new teams (post-Pirates), we’ll now start diversifying within teams. We already have something on the Blue Jays to win the AL East. This gives us some postseason leverage on them. FanGraphs is flashing a 90% eROI at this price. It’s probably not actually that large, but as we said last week, Toronto’s got a good lineup.
Pick: Toronto to win +2500. 2.00 units to win 50.00.
Chicago (AL) at Detroit
We’re on another big underdog today. That’s the direction our early-season approach is pointing. We don’t love continuing to bet so many of these, but we do want to give the approach a couple weeks since it was so strong in 2023. It’s a high-variance strategy right now, for better or worse. Since our approach is consistent, I do wonder if that’s telling us something about the market. Why is the value so prevalently on big underdogs, at least through this FanGraphs-minus-red-flags lens?
Pick: Chicago to win +210. 15.00 units to win 31.50.
NCAA Tournament
We’re seeing slightly better value on Auburn than Houston, and the leverage is better as well, given it’s likelier Auburn wins tomorrow than that Houston does.
Pick: Auburn to win +575. 1.00 unit to win 5.75.
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I am only roughly 90% confident in these numbers. We’ll get that Google Sheet up soon which tracks all our bets this year.
2025: –117.35 units (started with 1,000-unit bankroll)
2025: –4% average ROI (weighted by unit; sample size: 246 single-game markets plus one half-completed futures portfolio)
Pre-2025: 0% average ROI (worse when limited to only sports)
Units taken from best odds we can find at major sportsbooks available to most Americans.
These bets are not investment advice. If you’re worried you or someone you know might have a gambling addiction, call 1-800-GAMBLER for free, confidential help.
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