We were feeling so good about our little winning streak. Apologies, and alas.
One MLB moneyline today and our weekday MLB futures. No NBA or NHL yet. Think we’ll do futures for those starting on Saturday.
Chicago (NL) at San Diego
Being Cubs fans, we love Shōta Imanaga. Being fans of xERA and FIP rather than ERA, we’re averse to betting on Randy Vásquez. But our method points to the Padres here.
What’s going on is that Imanaga’s peripherals (xERA and FIP) aren’t great so far this year. They’re fine, but they’re both worse than his projected FIP from FanGraphs’s Depth Charts. Vásquez’s are bad, but so is his projection, which is worse than his real FIP so far. What we’re looking for with that piece of the exercise is whether a pitcher might be legitimately underperforming his projections, which is a concern because those projections are what we use to identify potential value in the first place. I’m not actually very worried about Imanaga, but we’re process–trusters. I will say: These odds don’t pass the smell test. The Padres are playing great baseball. The Cubs have played decently so far, but they didn’t look like winners last night. And then when you add in the cold weather theory around Imanaga’s success…
Pick: San Diego to win +140. 15.00 units to win 21.00. Imanaga and Vásquez must start.
NL East
Volatility’s our friend with these, and the NL East has been volatile so far. We now have division futures on each of the Braves, Phillies, and Mets, and while they aren’t all longer than 2-to-1 (the number we’d need to lock in a profit on any of those three), they’re steps in that direction.
Pick: Atlanta to win +340. 2.00 units to win 6.80.
ALCS
The A’s are popping up again as +EV, and while I do have some skepticism about the theory, it’s certainly possible markets’ seemingly aggressive fade of Sacramentan home-field advantage is correct. Our portfolio’s big enough and these odds are long enough for us to not worry about that today. We don’t worry too much about nuance with our MLB futures. Especially not in April.
Pick: Sacramento to win +10000. 2.00 units to win 200.00.
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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: –87.79 units (started with 1,000-unit bankroll)
2025: –3% average ROI (weighted by unit; sample size: 295 single-game markets plus one 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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