Aikido Predictions 8/28
It is a strange day. Many of today’s games were postponed. With the uncertainty over who would play, who wouldn’t play and even who might play two that only go seven innings, no one posted lines.
I certainly can understand that. Some teams might have a bunch of players unavailable but still play, which would wreck havoc with the odds.
We here at Aikido Sports are not going to let any of that stop us.
Nor are we going to let stop us that we’ve spent the last two days trying to get seven inning games to work, and have no good way to know for sure if it worked right.
Looking at the initial games, I was concerned the program had been messed up by the transition. Every total is a 9 or higher with a 10, two 10.5s and a 13.5.
Then again, turning a bunch of the season’s games into seven inning games should make us think scoring should be higher going forward, and the predictions for today mostly have not changed outside of the doubleheaders. All the 6s and 6.5s that initially look like a different world than tomorrow’s lines suddenly made sense, and are reflected in the actual lines.
So here’s what we have for tomorrow.
901 Orioles A. Cobb Over 9.0-116
902 Blue Jays H. Ryu -160
905 Braves R. Erlin Over 9.5+103
906 Phillies Z. Wheeler -130
907 Twins S. Guy Over 10.0+102
908 Tigers T. Skubal 114
909 Rays R. Yarbrough Over 9.0-115
910 Marlins H. Mejia 166
911 Cubs K. Hendricks Over 9.5-103
912 Reds W. Miley 150
913 Nationals M. Scherzer Over 9.5+106
914 Red Sox C. Mazza 179
923 Dodgers D. May Over 10.5+103
924 Rangers M. Minor 209
915 Royals D. Duffy Over 10.0+100
916 White Sox R. Lopez -106
917 Pirates D. Holland Over 9.5-103
918 Brewers C. Burnes -186
919 Indians T. McKenzie Over 9.0-103
920 Cardinals D. Ponce de Leon 102
921 Padres G. Richards Over 13.5+101
922 Rockies A. Senzatela 154
925 Athletics C. Bassitt Over 9.5-107
926 Astros L. McCullers Jr. -120
927 Mariners N. Margevicius Over 9.5-107
928 Angels G. Canning -192
929 Giants T. Anderson Over 10.5-113
930 Diamondbacks L. Weaver -143
931 Yankees J. Montgomery Over 9.0-112
932 Mets U. Quantity 148
S. Guy and U. Quantity are my canonical ‘unknown minor league pitcher making his first start’ pitchers.
If the Mets start Porcello, Matz, Peterson or Gsellman, expect a modest but substantial improvement. If they start Wakka, given today’s line coming back from the injury, no bonus. The Twins will get a similar bonus for Dobnak, a smaller one for Wisler, and at least some bonus for anyone they’ve previously started.
This is the real test - posting the slate before anyone else does.
So, how did the program do? Now is the time to call out its mistakes. Place your virtual bets before the lines open elsewhere and explain what your fair value is and why! We’ll use the Pinnacle sports fee schedule, so assume that the line above is fair and go from there - so for example, in the Athletics game, you’d bet Over 9.5-113, Under 9.5+102, Astros -125 or Athletics +115. You get to play offense here purely in the dark, so you really should crush it - this is the kind of odds offered to get people in the door, not something where the bookmaker could make money. But that’s fine - there’s nothing at stake except pride, and we can track both results and line movement if we do this often enough.
(Note that I don’t actually expect any action on this one, I don’t have many eyes yet, but I wanted to throw it out there and see what happened.)
Of course, all these lines assume nine inning games, and they assume that both teams are entirely available to play. If those things aren’t true, adjustments will need to be made.