Ugly stuff yesterday, with a classic overextension of confidence after a good day. Though to be fair, if we’d played it tighter, we wouldn’t have bet our only win, so tight vs. loose was probably a wash.
Back to the tiny units today as we try to get our “spot” approach profitable. It’s currently 15–13 against an average of –121 odds, for a –2.25% expected return on the average bet after you remove all the rounding.
Sacramento at Detroit
The Tigers haven’t lost back-to-back series all year. To try to keep that string alive, they send out…Dietrich Enns?
Enns makes his second career MLB start today, having previously made one in 2017 with the Twins. 34 years old, his career innings total is only 26 and a third. He’s spent the last three years in Japan and Korea, with mixed results. But in the minor leagues for Detroit this season, he’s posting a 2.97 FIP across a 14-start sample. And back in 2021, 22.1 of those 26.1 career innings came with Tampa Bay, for whom he notched a 2.32 FIP and 2.59 xERA.
Enns isn’t supposed to last long in this one—he’s only gone longer than five innings once so far in the minor league season—but he should give the Tigers a chance. Jeffrey Springs is doing good things, but he’s not scorching or anything like that.
Pick: Detroit to win –149. 1.20 units to win 0.81. Springs and Enns must start.
Los Angeles at Colorado
Is Clayton Kershaw serviceable? We think so. We wouldn’t say he’s good, but we’d say he’s serviceable. Today, that should be enough as the Dodgers look for the sweep. Unfortunately for Austin Gomber, the Dodgers have seen a lot of Austin Gomber the last few years.
Pick: Los Angeles to win –280. 2.25 units to win 0.80. Kershaw and Gomber must start.
Atlanta at New York (NL)
This one, to me, comes down to whether you think the Mets have a Braves-shaped mental block and/or are in a funk right now. We tend to think they’re just on a little skid, and that even if they’ve been in a funk, the probability of last night breaking them out of it is high enough to make this worthwhile. If we’re psychoanalyzing baseball teams, it’s hard to bet on the Braves.
Pick: New York to win –108. 0.87 units to win 0.81. Holmes and Canning must start.
AL West
We’re laying up a little here, with the value on this positive but small. We still weren’t in a spot where we’d profit if every division favorite held on, and while we’d like to insure ourselves against a Mets comeback in the NL East, this gets us to a solid position on the aggregate in every other reasonable regular season scenario.
Pick: Houston to win –300. 4.00 units to win 1.33.
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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.
2025–26: –399.54 units (started with 1,000-unit bankroll)
2025–26: –7% average ROI (weighted by unit; sample size: 421 single-game markets plus three 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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