No luck on our MLB moneyline last night, and mildly disappointing developments in our NHL futures portfolio. Thankfully, our NBA portfolio has something on the pacers.
Now. More on all of those, plus our weekday MLB futures.
Los Angeles at Miami
We’re changing up our approach, but only a little bit. Some of this is what we think we did in 2023. (We need better record-keeping.)
What we’ve been doing, to pick moneylines, is going through the list of potential positive-EV plays from biggest favorite to biggest underdog until we find a play that fits our criteria. What we’re going to do now—with one big exception—is go through the list from biggest expected value to smallest. The exception is that on days after we’ve lost back-to-back picks, we’re going to look for the likeliest team to win who exhibits no red flags. A big part of our 2023 success was avoiding three-game losing streaks.
This may or may not work, and if it doesn’t, we’ll need to find something to bridge the gap until mid-July, when Heat Index 1 and Heat Index 2 had their strong streak last year. Hopefully it works and we don’t have to worry about it too much.
(As for this pick: I think markets are too confident the Dodgers won’t lose back-to-back games to the Marlins.)
Pick: Miami to win +208. 15.00 units to win 31.20. Knack and Bellozo must start.
AL Central
We have a Royals World Series future, but we don’t have anything on them in the regular season. There’s value on Kansas City today, and we’ll take that.
Pick: Kansas City to win +500. 2.00 units to win 10.00.
World Series
With no other new value to lock in, we turn our eyes to big value. That’s here on Seattle. The Mariners aren’t favored over the field in the AL West, but they’re the clear favorite. With the Tigers our other heavily bet AL team so far, we could theoretically find ourselves with a clear path to having one of our horses guaranteed an ALCS spot.
Pick: Seattle to win +2000. 2.00 units to win 40.00.
NBA Playoffs
We’re in an interesting boat here where we think markets are showing value on the Knicks in the short-term and the Thunder in the long-term. The bigger value, though, is on the Knicks’ opponent (in the long-term) and the Thunder’s opponent (in the short-term). We’ll keep an eye on New York. For right now, our portfolio still wants Boston winning, but it’d prefer Denver over Oklahoma City.
Pick: Denver to win series over OKC +267. 2.00 units to win 5.34.
Pick: Boston to win Finals +200. 2.00 units to win 4.00.
Stanley Cup
Here’s a thought about the Jets: Our model should be more prone to recency bias than markets. This early in the playoffs, markets are still more skewed by expectations, and our model’s more skewed by the regular season. But they should be converging, and at some point, our model should pass markets in terms of how big a deal it makes of, say, Connor Hellebuyck’s postseason struggles so far. We’re not there yet, but we’re moving in that direction.
We have a lot on the Jets and Leafs. Big night tonight.
Pick: Winnipeg to win +1000. 2.00 units to win 20.00.
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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: –194.60 units (started with 1,000-unit bankroll)
2025: –5% average ROI (weighted by unit; sample size: 323 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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