A night full of walk-offs is really fun until the Angels let the Padres do it when you took Anaheim at +184.
Thankfully, the Pacers took care of business, putting our NBA portfolio back in the black.
Another MLB moneyline today, today’s playoff basketball and hockey futures, and our weekday baseball futures. Off we go.
Miami at Chicago (NL)
We’re on another big underdog today, this time riding with Ryan Weathers in his season debut. Weathers missed the beginning of the year with a mild flexor strain in his throwing forearm.
Is that a red flag for us? It isn’t. We’d prefer someone we could have more confidence in, but that isn’t really available today. FanGraphs projects Weathers to post a FIP worse than both his xERA and his FIP from last year. That’s based in part on 2021, 2022, and 2023, all of which are legitimate and should be included in the projection. But it’s not like FanGraphs is basing this on some Weathers breakout. And the value’s big: Before accounting for injuries and bullpen fatigue, the expected ROI on this play is around 22%.
Pick: Miami to win +191. Weathers and Taillon must start. 15.00 units to win 28.65.
World Series
Pop quiz.
Q: Who does FanGraphs project to finish with the most wins in the American League?
A: The Detroit Tigers.
Q: Who does FanGraphs project to meet in the AL’s 4-seed vs. 5-seed Wild Card Series?
A: The Kansas City Royals and the Minnesota Twins.
It’s tight—the Yankees are only 0.6 projected wins behind the Tigers, and the Twins are part of a seven-team clump projected to finish between 81.6 and 84.5 victories—but there’s a lot of value on these AL Central teams. Not very much of it is getting to play more games against the White Sox.
Pick: Detroit to win +1800. 2.00 units to win 36.00.
Pick: Minnesota to win +5500. 2.00 units to win 110.00.
NBA Finals
With the Pacers through to the conference finals, our portfolio’s now up 3.84 units. As we wrote yesterday, though, we have twelve on Boston in later rounds and four combined on Golden State and Denver in this round. There’s work to do.
Thankfully, we have 173.84 liquid units in this portfolio. We’re up 3.84. We have 30 pending. Even if we finish this round in the red, accounting for those Celtics conference and Finals futures, we’ll have the space to make up ground, and with a 20-to-1 future outstanding on Minnesota in the West, we’ll have leverage too.
So, we’re taking the value here, and we think the value’s on the Celtics. Yes, missing Jayson Tatum and kind of missing Kristaps Porziņģis is a huge deal. Yes, they’re down three games to one. But we’ve heard all year how much better the Celtics are on paper than the rest of the East. If they were a 50/50 shot to win the rest of their games, 0.0% ROI odds would be 31-to-1. They’re favored tonight, and they’d be favored in Game 7 if they got there, and they’d probably be favored over the Pacers if they won that hypothetical Game 7. 40-to-1 is too long to pass up.
Pick: Boston to win +4000. 2.00 units to win 80.00.
Stanley Cup
Our Jets futures are likely up in flames. Our model hasn’t quite come around enough yet on the Oilers. We still think there’s value on the Leafs, tied 2–2 in a series where tonight they play Game 5 at home. I don’t know that we’d call them series favorites, like our model does, but there should be value. That value only gets bigger the later in the playoffs we look.
Pick: Toronto to win +950. 2.00 units to win 19.00.
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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: –197.37 units (started with 1,000-unit bankroll)
2025: –5% average ROI (weighted by unit; sample size: 332 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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