“Baseball breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall all alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.”
-A. Bartlett Giamatti, MLB commissioner
1. Detroit Tigers (+130) @ Cleveland Indians (O/U 7.5)
Our model is showing a nice edge on the Tigers in this spot projecting this game as pick ‘em. The AL Central divisional race has been well publicized as the Tigers have seemingly spit the bit losing their last 7 in a row and 11 of their last 12. On the other hand, the Indians have won an astounding 16 of their last 18 games. The Indians have now come all the way back from what appeared to be an insurmountable pennant chase to effectively stick their noses ahead of the Tigers as they have identical records and hold the tiebreaker. This dramatic juxtaposition will be on the forefront of the public’s betting psychology in this game and accounts for the 30 cents difference in the market’s pricing of this matchup versus our own. The correct play here is to hoist your contrarian flag, hold your nose and take the excessive +money on the Tigers who may find a motivational boost having their backs against the wall.
Selection: Tigers ML (+130) to Win 1 unit.
