The Angels couldn’t break through yesterday, but we’ve got a full assortment to get us back on the horse: Our daily MLB moneyline action, a Rockies run line, our weekday MLB futures, and our daily NHL and NBA playoff futures moves.
San Diego at San Francisco
A couple weeks ago, there was a small hubbub about the Padres only scoring three runs in five games. They were in the midst of a six-game losing streak and their bats, like the bullpen a few weeks earlier, had suddenly lost their power.
Last week, the Padres had a crappy wRC+ (19th-best in the majors, I think) but scored a decent number of runs (the 9th-most).
The point of all this?
The Padres aren’t going to keep winning at a 94-win pace. That’s too much to ask from this roster. But the Giants aren’t either, and Padres narratives have already gotten out of control twice this year only to snap back to reality.
San Diego probably won’t score many runs tonight. Logan Webb’s one of the best pitchers in the league. But Stephen Kolek’s done good work in four of his five starts, and the Padres’ offense is average but not bad. There’s a little value here.
Pick: San Diego to win +155. 15.00 units to win 23.25. Kolek and Webb must start.
Colorado at Miami
This is where we’re hopefully getting real opportunity betting against the Rockies on the run line. The point of this exercise is our belief that the Rockies are worse than bad. The Marlins? Bad. The Rockies? Dysfunctional to the point of breaking models.
Pick: Miami –1.5 (+110). 15.00 units to win 16.50.
World Series
One big benefit of the Red Sox scuffling is that there’s value available on the Blue Jays, who not only have been better than the Red Sox so far this year but are also expected to be better on paper over the rest of the season, per FanGraphs’s Depth Charts. We haven’t bet the Blue Jays since the very early season, so we’ll happily put some big upside on a playoff bubble team.
Pick: Toronto to win +6000. 2.00 units to win 120.00.
NLCS
In the NL, it’s more Braves today. We’re in a pretty comfortable spot on all three good NL East teams. That probably means the market is overrating how much it’ll hurt each to compete against the others for that division title privilege.
Pick: Atlanta to win +1200. 2.00 units to win 24.00.
NBA Finals Game 1
We said we weren’t going to hammer this line, and we still aren’t. If there still isn’t total series value available tomorrow, we’ll pivot to something else. For now, though, we see value on Indiana in a high-uncertainty Game 1, and eight more units isn’t enough to make the Thunder/Thunder scenario unprofitable in this table:
| Winner | G1 Winner | Total |
| Thunder | Pacers | 72.28 |
| Pacers | Pacers | 51.18 |
| Thunder | Thunder | 5.08 |
| Pacers | Thunder | -16.02 |
Pick: Indiana to win +320. 8.00 units to win 25.60.
Stanley Cup Finals
The good news is that the odds keep shifting towards the Oilers, which indicates our pro-Oilers portfolio has more value than markets previously implied. The bad news is that there isn’t whole–series value available on either team right now.
We checked with our model, and it’s showing a 43.8% chance this series gets decided in five games or less. That’s pretty big value at this price. Here’s the new scenario breakdown:
| Winner | G1 Winner | Games | Total |
| Oilers | Oilers | Under 5.5 | 33.81 |
| Oilers | Panthers | Under 5.5 | 24.78 |
| Oilers | Oilers | Over 5.5 | 19.81 |
| Oilers | Panthers | Over 5.5 | 10.78 |
| Panthers | Oilers | Under 5.5 | -47.11 |
| Panthers | Panthers | Under 5.5 | -56.14 |
| Panthers | Oilers | Over 5.5 | -61.11 |
| Panthers | Panthers | Over 5.5 | -70.14 |
One nice thing about this is that those bottom two scenarios—where the Panthers beat the Oilers but it takes a while—are scenarios where we’ll have more time to adjust. And if the Panthers are winning games early in the series, Gelo will probably like them more than the markets, sitting fairly even with markets right now and generally reacting more dramatically to new data than the market-makers do.
Pick: Under 5.5 games +180. 5.00 units to win 9.00.
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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: –318.37 units (started with 1,000-unit bankroll)
2025: –7% average ROI (weighted by unit; sample size: 356 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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