Aikido Picks 4/20
I still haven’t looked at the results at all, but I’ll have to give up that ghost and look soon. Hopefully I’m doing well.
If you find yourself disagreeing with a pick or a rating of a team or pitcher, and you think you understand the error, speak up in the comments! I’m especially interested to know about big disagreements. Why are the Tigers only small favorites today?
That, and spreading the word, are the best ways to keep motivation up. It’s a long season, and I have a lot on my plate.
In the meantime, we’ve got a bunch of plays.
As usual not mentioning when I pass purely because edge is tiny, listing them here because I find it useful.
901 Diamondbacks +121
Standard play.
903/904 Cardinals/Nationals Under 9+104
PASSING: 904 Nationals -125
If we didn’t like the under we’d be taking the Nationals here, but this is a much better way to express our disagreement.
905 Giants +144
906 Giants/Phillies Over 8.5+103
This is a case where we take both lines because the aggressive opinion gets hedged rather than amplified. Either Webb is this bad or he isn’t, and either way it’s fine.
908 Cubs +119
I’ll still root for the Mets but this seems straightforwardly like way too much disrespect for Arrieta slash a math error. I’ll get to watch so we’ll see.
909/910 Brewers/Padres Under 7-116
Painful number to ever take but we’re in San Diego and the pitching is excellent. This makes sense to me.
911/912 White Sox/Indians Under 7.5+100
912 Indians +101
I’m not going to pretend to know these teams at this stage, but I feel comfortable enough here to take both.
913/914 Blue Jays/Red Sox Under 8-104
With pitching this good getting an 8 seems great.
917 Rangers +1.5 -105
917/918 Rangers/Angels Over 8.5-113
This is another place where we’re taking lines that hedge each other, so we can be more aggressive with this over rather than less. The runline on the Rangers is still 5 cents better than the moneyline even if our total is right, 7 cents if the posted total is accurate. Absolutely nothing wrong with +187 as an alternative, other than having a better option. If you want size, fine to slam both in these spots.
922 Mariners +1.5 +109
The moneyline is borderline on its own, but liking it gives us permission to take a home team getting odds and a run and a half, which is almost always excellent. The math did change a bit thanks to the new extra inning rule, but not enough to stop this from being the play.
926 Tigers -124
This is by math the play of the day, perhaps the season, as we have fair as -197, so we know something happened. Our rating on Anderson is atrocious but we like the under a little anyway, and I’m tempted to take the under here even though by math it’s super marginal.
927 Orioles +106
Neidert’s rating of 0.624 is as bad as Aikido ratings get. If you’re worse than that, the teams realize you shouldn’t be pitching. If you’re half as bad as this, they usually realize it, but some teams have to go with what they got. I do worry that this is going too far and the Orioles are terrible, but the Marlins are terrible too, we’re underdogs and it’s not like Harvey is getting lots of respect he doesn’t deserve (although he definitely doesn’t deserve any). So it seems fine.