I mean, they want to do the same

things.

I don't know if I'd rate them anywhere near the same level of effectiveness, certainly.

But yeah, if it is not Drew Rasmussen, and if it is Drew Rasmussen, I make the brewers about minus 145.

But the market has come up for minus 125 all the way now to making the raise as high as plus 145.

If it is Nick Martinez or Steven Matz, you know, that would seemingly be the other combination that the raise could roll out here.

If it's Matz or Martinez, I'd make it closer to minus 160 for Milwaukee.

At one point, it was like the fourth inning, and they had like a 65% hard hit rate in the game or something crazy like that.

I saw you log a Churio bet late last night, so that's kind of the direction you think this is going, right?

Yeah, it's interesting.

In prediction markets, Churrio is still the underdog.

Prediction markets still have him at 42 cents.

He was at 35 cents last night on Kalashie.

You look at books today, Contreras, I believe it's Caesars, was minus 120, but Churrio at even money.

They're the only two guys that they posted.

So what are you seeing from this game for Milwaukee from a pitching standpoint? And then how are you betting it?

Sean, where are you going for with game one?

Yeah, I pivoted real hard.

Once the starting pitching announcement got changed, I had to buy out of my first five and full game unders.

I think I entered the full game under like 15 minutes before Rasmussen was not announced as the starter.

So that was a lot of fun.

I saw the market had come down to like the under six and a half had gone from like minus 125 to minus 115.

And I was like, okay, this is good enough for me now.

Nick Fortes.

How are we betting that?

Yeah, there's a lot of angles I want to go through in terms of the series.

So I'm not going to just basically take over here for the next 15 minutes.

We'll do our best to go back and forth.

But I do like the Brewers to win the series.

There are a lot of reasons why, even beyond the math, just in terms of the pure game projections, I make them about minus 185, minus 183 to win the series just under at 65%.

I would bet them up to roughly minus 170%.

It's almost entirely just those guys.

What are your thoughts here, Sean? Any bets? I know sometimes when the pitchers haven't been announced, it's hard to find value, but do you have anything for this one tonight?

Yeah, I played the over six and a half.

We'll talk about the pitcher prop in a moment.

Agree with you on the Guardians pitching plan.

I'd imagine it'll probably be Espino to start ahead of Bybee or Cantillo, or they'll just let Bybee go.

And if he fucks up, they'll bring in Cantillo the moment that they can.

Bybee, pretty consistent first and second time through the order splits.

we

Sean, uh, anything to add there? And then, uh, what are you looking at to bet in that game tonight, this afternoon?

Yeah, just, just to reiterate, Guardians at plus 120 for the series.

I make them about minus 105, so I like them down to roughly plus 105, plus 110 prior to game three.

It is a better price than their game three money line.

This is the biggest favorite they will be at any point in the series.

So I think this is the last best opportunity probably to jump in on the Rays series price.

I don't know how interested or how much of an edge I'm gonna show prior to game four.

He was their second-best starting pitcher all season long, basically.

Any thoughts on, you know, series prices, series props, any edges to glean from last night's crazy result where the Guardians normally very good defense let them down.

Yeah, the chop infield, Jose Ramirez needed to come in on that ball.

Did not lead the three runs.

Guardians hit the ball harder.

I'm told analytically that they're up 2-0.

So at least they have one of those two wins going back to Cleveland.

Listen, projected an edge on the Guardians for the series.

put it past pat murphy to use these guys i i said if this game if this series goes seven we might see ashby in six six of those games you know

I'm not sure if there's seven and a half's out there, but Sean, uh, you have a play on a total here and you have a player prop that I have as well here.

Yeah, I bet the under in this game and open.

I took a seven and a half minus one twenty two at DraftKings or sorry at FanDuel when the rest of the market kind of opened up around seven even money or just slight juice on it.

So that seven and a half seemed like an outlier jumped on that.

I made this six point.

Five.

So I like this down to about seven at minus 115 for game three on the under.

Any thoughts here on the series price? Any series props you're looking at here, Sean?

But your thoughts on, you know, the direction of this series these last couple of days and going into Saturday.

Yeah.

When Grant Taylor came in and gave the lead back up, I was like, not only are they cooked today, they're cooked for game five because it was like, Oh, here's Grant Taylor.

It's your best pitcher.

He's coming in for now the third or fourth time in this series.

And now he's getting hit and throwing pitches and he's going to make himself unavailable for game five.

And then the Guardians and Steven Vogt counter right back with, you're going to throw Grant Taylor.

Who would you rather save for home? Who would you rather pitch on the road between them?

But Sean, I know you have a couple of bets side and total on this one, so, uh, tell me what you're thinking with this game today.

Yeah, Guardians and under.

Uh, both teams are gonna be bullpenning it.

Guardians gonna start Daniel Espino, but expected to piggyback him with Joey Cantillo, I would imagine at some point.

Cantillo actually projects the best of Cantillo, uh, Tanner Bibee, and Foster Griffin.

Griff- Griffin and Cantillo are kind of similar, but both of them clearly better for me than Tanner Bibee, and I think there's a chance you could end up seeing both today because, as we know and as we've discussed, the ALC or ALDS series have that extra off day built in.

So Parker Messick can go back on regular rest in game four for the Guardians if they should survive today, and then you will see Gavin Williams on regular rest in game five if they're able to make it there.

So what do you expect to see out of Milwaukee, and then do you have any bets here?

But any updates for you in terms of series prices or bets from a futures perspective you're looking at in those two series?

Yeah, I thought the Guardians were a little unlucky.

Hit the ball harder yesterday.

Expected runs were higher.

Just been unlucky not to be in that game.

Rudder was in scoring position a lot.

I think the White Sox went three for eight.

So with the pitching and flux in this one, Sean, are we more optimistic about offense here or is it another under?

Any edges on exact results? Anything like that for this one?

I make it minus 1,000, 92%.

So no edge on the series, no edge on the Padres to come back at the moment.

But what you could do and go ahead and do is play the Brewers to win the NL pennant.

I make that plus 135.

They're currently at plus 170.

Again, I gave them out... around mid-season at six to one.

Any thoughts there before we move on?

Uh, tell me why, uh, my dreams will be crushed over the next week.

No, you're allowed to wax poetic as long as you need to about your Chicago White Sox.

Uh, if my bets were in the final eight teams, I would be going on, uh, pretty long tangents as well.

Uh, I'm actually pretty surprised that, you know, forget the, the White Sox, you know, lefty versus righty thing against the Guardians.

I'm more surprised that the Guardians are starting lefty against the White Sox.

The White Sox had better splits against lefties than righties this year, 111 versus a 102 WRC+ against righties.

And over the final two months of the season, they were the best team in baseball against left-handed pitching.

Yeah.

Looking ahead, anything surprise you? Anything stand out in terms of the way the White Sox, Yankees, and Padres finished up their series?

Not particularly surprising.

I mean, the White Sox blasting the Astros or vice versa, I would say was kind of always on the table.

A little surprised that Hunter Brown got hit as hard as he did.

You and I discussed the White Sox potential advanced scouting advantages that they have over some teams.

Noticed that with the Twins this year as well.

The Twins invested nothing in their roster, but they played above expectations, and there seemed to be some front office, player development, analytics stuff going on because...

Or is it still too vague at this point?

Yeah

...

T scoring from first base on a stolen base attempt, and Altuve getting safe on what was later overturned to an error because the first baseman was not holding first base for the White Sox.

So pretty brutal set of outcomes amid a very brutal year of results in the eighth and ninth inning.

Uh, there's three games today that I still show value on under.

One, I align with the market, so we are back on the under here in Phillies and Braves.

Under seven, I took at even money.

Any leans, any, um, anything at all that you're seeing here in White Sox-Astros?

Where are you going with this one, Sean?

Under, and yeah, just to reiterate, since we went to the three game wildcard or best of three wildcard series format, 33, 14, and three to the under.

And yes, there's some randomness and variance within that, but certainly games play more aggressively to the under because these managers are more aggressively getting pitchers out of bad spots and avoiding seeing the opposing lineup a third time.

Now, you always have the possibility and there will be games that we discuss where the starting pitching is even more questionable than this one.

You always have the possibility that a team like the Phillies, who knows they're an underdog in game one, knows they'll have Christopher Sanchez and then some combination of Aaron Nolan, Zach Lillard in game three.

If they get there, if they fall behind, they may try to save the bullpen because they really pressed hard.

Hard down the stretch in order to get into the playoffs, had to play and get a win on the final day of the regular season.

Didn't mean to cut you off.

going in what are your thoughts just kind of generally before we jump into the buy sell on kind of dodgers versus the field um and and how this is setting up uh you know with the nl race and the brewers and all that

Yeah, I took the Dodgers at plus 350 at this time last year.

I'm going to give them out a plus 230 right now.

I ran a few different models.

I have my game sim model that, you know, projects out every game, runs a Monte Carlo situation of all those different potential projections.

Roughly speaking, projects the Dodgers to win each series around 70% of the time, maybe a little bit lower than that.

Composite projections, Fangrass, Pocota, ATC, all those good ones that we always talk about.

Well, you guys know I'm

Who do you like in this one, Sean?

Yeah, I'd say the Mariners to about, uh, minus 105.

I make them minus 113 in this game.

Zach Wheeler saw his VLO bounce back up in his last start.

It had been declining, though, for a number of starts.

Came, first came back off the IL, you know, later in the season, um, VLO was down, got all the way up from like 94 to 96, and then it started to trend back down, and in some of his recent starts, it had dipped to a multi-year low before bouncing back up in his last start.

So you do see starters bounce up and down in terms of the velocity, but once you hit that peak or that s-, uh, floor, you do have that baseline for being able to drop back down to it.

Oh, yeah

Dodgers, huge favorites as you might expect, but still value, Sean? Yeah.

I think so.

I really saw the Dodgers struggle with the fastball velocity from Mizorowski, from Logan Henderson.

That's the thing that they've been struggling with of late.

Hopefully they do not struggle with the fastball from Tomoyuki Sagano today.

This is a guy who they should be able to handle a little bit better.

Sagano has pitched better of late, but this Dodgers offense, when it is going, we know should be the best in baseball.

Martin Perez, Bailey Ober, and you have a play on this total.

And we'll hope for no shenanigans in the run-scoring department tonight, Sean.

Yeah, hopefully the Cy Young favorite, Dylan Cease, carrying that nice long shot ticket on both he and Jordan Alvarez from the preseason.

The only, feels like the only good calls I've had this year are the long shot bets on those two guys.

But Cease has been trending up, Schlittler trending down just a little bit.

Cease, I believe, has overtaken the lead in terms of the odds board.

That change up that the...

Blue Jays have had him throwing this year a 194 expected Woba and a 53% whiff rate.

Nick Martinez against Mason Barnett, and another over for you here, Sean.

Uh, and you do have a, you're not, it doesn't look like you're going full game Royals here, but you do have an angle where you like the underdogs, just based on the price I'm guessing.

Yeah, I show an edge for the full game as well, but a bigger edge for the first five innings.

So attacking Skubal specifically in the first five seems like an awkward approach, not getting the bullpen involved.

I hate this Royals bullpen.

I would much rather have just Noah Cameron involved over the first five innings, and more importantly, guaranteed having a lefty in there for at least the first four, four and a half innings against this Dodgers offense, which as I've pointed out, number one in baseball against right-handed pitching, 113 WRC+, even with their recent funk.

But they are sixth against lefties, and they drop to a 106, and again, shut down by Eduardo Rodriguez yesterday.

They just struggle a little bit more with lefties.

Are you buying Soroka and his return, or are you fading the Snakes?

And again, you're on a total here.

Yeah, I like the under in this matchup, unsurprisingly, with these two starting pitchers going.

But Jared Jones has found his form.

I have both of these guys as top 30 starting pitchers.

Again, no surprise considering how well they've thrown the ball.

I've been high on Logan Henderson the entire year.

But yeah, with the bullpen additions, the Pirates move from a bottom 10 bullpen to a league average bullpen.

So curious your thoughts here on this game with the new look Tigers, new look Mariners, and with Tigers starting pitcher uncertainty.

Yeah,

relatively important game in series between these two teams.

They were neck and neck in the NL wildcard race.

D-backs a game up coming into today.

I've preferred the D-backs all season.

Prefer them tonight.

I make the D-backs about minus 130.

The only trade the Mariners have made so far, I think, is Castillo, and they brought back Sir Anthony Dominguez in that one.

So, uh, tell us, uh, you know, why you like this total so much, 'cause, uh, I love it myself.

Yeah, so there's, you know, the, the main concern is the fact that the top two relievers on both teams are probably down today.

Edwin Diaz, Tanner Scott threw back-to-back days for the Dodgers, and the Red Sox have used Weisser and Chapman three out of the past five days, three out of the past four days each.

So don't anticipate the highest leverage relievers for either team getting involved in this game, but any time there is a bullpen game, you are gonna see the times through the order split avoided, certainly by the Red Sox, or certainly by the Dodgers in this game.

They're not gonna expose any of their pitchers more than one or two, more than one time through the order.

Uh, Will Klein, Jack Dreyer probably your likeliest candidates to go multiple innings.

Jack Dreyer's been phenomenal.

And then, uh, your Cardinals Blue Jays total.

So where are you going with this one today?

Yeah, he's led the AL West at some point this year.

I guess everybody seemingly has led the AL West at some point this year as the Rangers have finally overtaken by a couple games of the Mariners.

But in terms of this matchup, like both of these young lefties, they get to their – or they have different profiles in terms of their effectiveness.

Bennett is the location and the command guy, 115 location plus.

but just the 92 stuff plus figure.

But what he does do is generate relatively weak contact relative to that stuff profile, much more like a Parker Messick where you don't see, you see the elite command, you don't see the elite stuff on paper, but in terms of how it plays out and generating weak contact seemingly plays a little bit better than the stuff models.

Again, a side and a total for you in this one.