Aikido Picks 5/1

Results post 2 coming soon

The temporary (small) wave of interest in these posts seems to have subsided, and we’re back at not that many people watching, and still have zero interaction going on each day. That’s disappointing, and pushes me towards prioritizing other projects. I’ll be continuing for now, but I don’t anticipate that high a probability I make it to June if nothing changes on those fronts - I’ve got too many other projects that are providing more value.

Anyway, today’s big issue is that we once again love a lot of under bets. As always, that’s not obviously a problem, since under bets tend to be good, so as long as one is only taking half of them, if it’s the good half, that’s usually fine, but it does require adjustments.

953/954 Cubs/Reds Under 8.5+104

I don’t love that we keep doing this, but it’s a full half run.

955 Mets +109

PASSING: 955/956 Mets/Phillies Under 8-108

Normally I wouldn’t bother mentioning the under here, since it’s very thin, but I want it a lot in context. The Mets offense has been refusing to actually score runs for years now, and I’ve stopped believing it’s a coincidence, plus the Phillies offense is kind of decimated at the moment. You’ve got to love getting an under bet in, and if I was looking generally balanced, I’d take this opportunity. But with six other under sides today, and a general pattern of similar bets, this is not a free action, and I can’t justify it. Which leaves me betting on the Mets offense, but it’s something I’ll have to live with.

959/960 Dodgers/Brewers Over 7.5+102

PASSING: 960 Brewers +118

Pretty great right now to find a clean over bet we like, and I don’t see any concerns. Playing the Brewers here is very reasonable but I decided it wasn’t quite good enough given we have a total bet.

965 Tigers +1.5 +101

965/966 Tigers/Yankees Under 8.5-115

As usual in similar spots the runline here is the better way to bet on the underdog, and we happen to also think the total is too high which is a nice bonus. Tigers +200 is also available, and it’s good enough that if you were looking for size it would be fine to hit both lines.

969 Indians +161

969/970 Indians/White Sox Under 8+101

Passing on this total in light of the big disagreement on the side is reasonable, as there has to be something I’m missing and it’s the smaller edge. There’d have to be a pretty big missing element to make me sad about getting +161 in this spot.

971/972 Orioles/Athletics Under 8+101

PASING: Athletics -188

If I was ‘fully operational’ I would probably lay the -188 here with the intention of doubling back on the +1.5 line reasonably often, since a lot of favorites end up going higher, and in some sense taking big favorites is a cheap action when the runlines are so readily available to buy you out. Also, I’d want to be ‘mixing up’ my play with more marginal bets, giving action to get action. As a pure Aikido play, it’s not good enough.

975/976 Red Sox/Rangers Over 8.5-103

976 Rangers +105 +106

That’s a pretty thin total, but there are two things pushing for it. One is that I really don’t like betting against the Red Sox offense right now at this price level, and we definitely want the Rangers for the runline value even if the side value is thin otherwise. The other is that we’re betting a ton of unders, so a 6-cent edge here isn’t as thin as it looks.

977/978 Angels/Mariners Under 8.5-101

977 Angels -138

This hedges our Newsome exposure, in case we’re estimating that wrong, and our edge on both sides is solid.