Big day yesterday. Coincidentally, a Mets/Rays World Series is involved in our MLB futures portfolio’s current best-case scenario.
More MLB moneyline action today, more Rockies, and our daily NBA and NHL playoff futures. Those MLB futures are off for the weekend.
Chicago (AL) at Texas
We’re doing it.
It’s not that we think the White Sox are going to win. It’s that the Rangers are mediocre enough and used enough of their bullpen last night to make this a good price, even on a bad team. Jacob deGrom still has it. But even against the White Sox, that has the chance to not be enough. The White Sox are bad. But they aren’t numbers-defying bad. They aren’t the Rockies.
Pick: Chicago to win +248. 15.00 units to win 37.20. Vasil and deGrom must start.
Colorado at Atlanta
We got one yesterday, and it sure felt good. Hoping for two tomorrow, and to then take Sunday off of this angle (as we usually do).
Pick: Atlanta –1.5 (–157). 15.00 units to win 9.55. Dollander and Strider must start.
NBA Finals
If you use a fairly standard assessment of home-court advantage (shoutout to FiveThirtyEight, RIP) and run Monte Carlo simulations of Games 5 and 7, you either find that the Thunder are 71% likely to win Game 5 or 87% likely to win the series. Which answer you get depends on whether you use the Game 5 moneyline (which implies a 78% Thunder G5 win probability) or the series odds (which imply an 80% Thunder series win probability) as your base. Yet again, the market’s either giving value on the Thunder to win the series, the Pacers to win the next game, or both. Or, home-court advantage has dramatically (and I mean dramatically—these are huge gaps) changed.
Our bet continues to be that the single-game markets are correct and the Finals market is skewed. We’re guessing sportsbooks have large liabilities on the Pacers, who were available at extremely long odds as recently as a few weeks ago. They’re making the Pacers artificially expensive now in response.
This is difficult, because we like the Pacers and we think the teams look well-matched and Neil Paine’s model (which we’ve used all postseason with great success) says there’s narrow value on the Pacers to win it all. But it’s also easy, because we built a big position on the Pacers and gave ourselves a lot of leverage. We’re in on the Thunder, and while I hope as a fan that this doesn’t happen, the likeliest scenario is the Thunder winning in six.
Here are the new scenarios for our portfolio as a whole, which exits Game 4 up 73.77 units. It began as a 200-unit portfolio.
| Winner | Games | Total |
| Pacers | 6 | 99.87 |
| Thunder | 6 | 98.64 |
| Pacers | 7 | 46.69 |
| Thunder | 7 | 45.46 |
Pick: Oklahoma City to win –500. 17.00 units to win 3.40.
Stanley Cup Finals
Again, no need for our model, beyond giving us the probabilities in the table below. The Panthers are either a small favorite or a small underdog tonight, and they’ll be a moderate favorite in Game 6 if they win Game 5. This implies two coin flips. The probability is higher than two coin flips.
New scenarios, with the portfolio down 42.31 units entering Game 5 tonight:
| Result | Probability | Total |
| Oilers in 6 | 27.3% | 22.41 |
| Panthers in 6 | 25.0% | -10.37 |
| Oilers in 7 | 26.3% | -32.33 |
| Panthers in 7 | 21.5% | -131.11 |
Pick: Florida –1.5 games (+300). 6.00 units to win 18.00.
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I am only roughly 90% confident in these numbers. At some point we’ll get that Google Sheet up which tracks all our bets this year.
2025: –262.32 units (started with 1,000-unit bankroll)
2025: –5% average ROI (weighted by unit; sample size: 378 single-game markets plus one completed futures portfolio and two partly completed futures portfolios)
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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