Bad Bets · Monday June 1 ⚾

A new month begins with a lock — DET +14% — and a hard-earned lesson from Sunday.

📊 From The Ledger: Sunday Was Brutal

Let’s not dress it up. Edge picks went 3-6 (33%). Model picks went 10-5 (66.7%). The split tells the whole story.

Three blowouts AGAINST our picks. PHI lost 1-9. MIA lost 1-10. MIN lost 3-9. When variance hits, it doesn’t hit politely.

But here’s the interesting part — the model picks were still 10-5. The model identified the direction correctly on two-thirds of the slate. The losses were concentrated almost entirely in the games where the model and market disagreed enough to publish an edge. Same pattern. Different teams. Different week.

🔬 The Edge Audit: What 30 Edge Plays Are Telling Us

After eight days, the data has a pattern that demands attention:

The model is meaningfully above breakeven (52.4%) on direction. But the edge filter is currently making our pick quality WORSE, not better. That’s the puzzle.

This is v0.6’s audit priority. Here’s the short list of suspects:

1. 🎯 Shin de-vig may be over-correcting on heavy favorites. If de-vigged market prices systematically under-price 60%+ favorites, the model looks like it has edge when it doesn’t.

2. 📊 v0.5’s true wRC+ is using ~50 games of current-season data. Hot starters look better than they are; cold starters worse. A blend of 0.4 × current + 0.6 × prior might calibrate better until July.

3. ⚾ The 58/42 SP/bullpen blend was calibrated for v0.2’s ERA-derived composite. With real FIP now sharper, the SP weight may need to increase (~65/35).

4. 📏 The 4% edge threshold came from intuition, not backtesting. Maybe the true threshold is 5%. Maybe it’s 6%. We’ll know when we run the cutoff sensitivity analysis.

5. 🤔 Directional-disagreement plays may be inherently noisier. When model and market disagree on who wins, the model is taking the variance side by definition.

The fix isn’t to panic. It’s to build the audit script, find the slice that’s leaking, make ONE targeted change, and watch another 30-50 picks. Changing five things at once means we never know which one helped.

v0.6 roadmap is officially open. Audit script first, changes second. 🛠️

📈 Running Ledger Through 8 Days

Model-pick accuracy holds steady. The leaderboard column to watch going forward is the edge column — and whether the v0.6 audit moves that number above 50%. ⚖️

🎯 Today’s Slate

Monday MLB picks at a glance:

• ⚾ 8 games — light Monday slate (it’s a getaway day for most teams)

• 🔒 1 LOCK — DET +14.0% at TB · first lock in four days

• 🎯 4 actionable plays (≥4%) — DET, KC, COL, SF

• 🔥 Slugfest: COL @ LAA projected 10.12 r (Freeland on the mound)

• ❄️ Pitchers’ duel: NYM @ SEA projected 7.63 r (Hancock at T-Mobile)

• 🌟 Big name watch: deGrom going for TEX, Yamamoto fresh off shutting down PHI Sunday

The thin Monday slate is what it is. But after three straight days with zero locks, the model surfaced something with conviction today — and it’s the biggest edge since the NYY +17.2% lock that cashed on May 26.

🎯 The Lock — DET +14.0% @ TB

#1 — Detroit Tigers @ Tampa Bay Rays

Model: DET 54.5% · Market: TB 59.6% · Total est: 8.32 r · PF: 93 · WX: dome

This is the biggest edge the model has surfaced in 6 days, and the matchup itself is fascinating.

Tampa Bay is priced as a near-60% favorite at home. The model has Detroit at 54.5% — a meaningful direction flip, not just a magnitude disagreement. The market thinks TB wins outright. The model thinks DET wins outright. That’s the kind of gap that either pays huge or reveals a model flaw immediately.

Why the gap, in plain English:

• ⚾ Ty Madden’s real FIP grades meaningfully ahead of Griffin Jax’s in the v0.5 composite. The market is pricing Jax as the better arm by a wider margin than the underlying numbers support.

• 🏟️ Tropicana, PF 93, dome. Low-scoring environment that amplifies pitcher-quality differences. If Madden truly is the better arm by even a half-run per nine, that gap is more decisive in a 7-run game than a 10-run game.

• 📊 DET’s offense vs RHP grades respectable in the splits the model is pulling. Not elite, but not the punchless lineup the market seems to be pricing.

The honest caveat after Sunday: the edge tier has been 0-5 on locks in 6 of 7 attempts since May 24. Six picks before this one have all looked like reasonable reads. Five lost. The seventh attempt today is the biggest gap yet — which means either the model has unique insight, or this is exactly the kind of disagreement that’s been costing us.

Verdict: Today’s only lock. Biggest edge in six days. The cleanest test yet of whether the conviction tier is broken or just unlucky. ⚾

📋 Honorable Mentions (4-10% Edge Plays)

🔁 The COL Note

After three straight days of COL +10%+ road losses (May 24-26), the model has surfaced COL on the road again — but at a much smaller edge (+5.7%) and against a non-elite opponent.

The trajectory of COL road plays since the relaunch:

• 🟥 Sun-Tue: 0-3 (all locks, all blowouts, outscored 29-10)

• ⚪ Wed-Sat: No actionable COL plays (model correctly priced them as coin flips)

• 🟦 Today: COL +5.7% @ LAA

This is the cleanest test yet of whether v0.5’s switch to true wRC+ from FanGraphs (replacing the OPS proxy) actually fixed the COL road-bias issue. If COL is genuinely undervalued at +5.7%, the model has learned. If they get smoked again, the audit list grows. ⛏️

🌟 The deGrom Watch

deGrom going for TEX at STL tonight — model has TEX +0.6% (pass tier). The model isn’t generating an edge despite the name brand.

Reading between the lines: the market has correctly priced deGrom this time, and the model agrees. This is actually the correct outcome for the “fade name-brand aces” pattern that lost 0-3 across the week (Cole, Skenes, then today Yamamoto’s domination). When model and market agree, there’s no edge to publish. Discipline. 🧘

⚠️ Caveats Still Apply

1. ❌ Not betting advice. Model output. Same caveat, new month.

2. 🔧 v0.6 audit is now the top priority. The edge filter has been net-negative across 30 plays. That’s actionable signal.

3. 🎲 8-game Monday means small sample. Don’t force action on top of the four edges. The volume isn’t there today.

4. 📊 102 picks in. Model-pick accuracy is real (62.7%). Edge-play accuracy is the puzzle (~43%). Two different stories in one column.

✅ What This Column Is, Two Days Into Week Two

A daily transparent read on where the MLB betting model and Vegas disagree. Wins, losses, blowouts, the occasional 3-6 edge-day disaster, and the kind of honest accounting that says “the audit data shows the edge filter isn’t working — here’s the plan.”

Tout services double down when they’re losing. Quant columns publish the audit.

If you’re new to Bad Bets:

• 📩 Subscribe for daily MLB picks at 10am ET

• 🐦 Follow @TradesAndGains for daily slate graphics

• 💬 Discord for JSON outputs, v0.5 internals, and v0.6 audit progress

See you tomorrow. ⚾

— T&G