📊 From The Ledger: Monday Delivered
Edge picks: 3-1 (75%) on actionable plays. Locks: 1-0. The audit conversation got immediate good news.
Three wins, two of them blowouts, one of them a wild 10-9 lock that swung on the last pitch of the night.
By the post-game bucket grader (the audit version that uses closing line edges):
🔒 Locks: 1-0 (100%)
💪 Strong: 1-0 (100%)
🎯 Solid: 3-0 (100%) — the “boring is winning” thesis continues 🤓
🤏 Leans: 1-2 (33.3%)
Total graded: 6-3 (66.7%)
The COL edge cashing is the data point I’d circle. Three straight days of COL road losses opened the column’s first audit item back on May 24-26. The v0.5 fix (true wRC+ from FanGraphs replacing the OPS proxy) was the suspected solution. Monday was the first live test where the model surfaced a meaningful COL road edge AFTER the fix shipped — and COL won 9-8 in a wild one. N=1 doesn’t prove a fix worked. But it doesn’t disprove it either. Logging.
The lock cashing is the OTHER data point worth circling. Going into Monday the lock tier was 2-5 across the 8-day tracking window (28.6%). DET +14% cashing pushed it to 3-5 (37.5%). KC’s +8.6% strong edge cashing in a 9-2 blowout also feels relevant to the audit. The directional-disagreement plays (where model and market disagree on who wins outright) were largely the winners yesterday. Good day for the edge filter. 📈
The only loss: SF +4.3% at MIL. Brewers won 16-2. When the model is wrong on a direction-flip play, it tends to be wrong loudly. Same pattern we saw Sunday.
📈 Running Ledger Through 9 Days
Up to 63.1% on model picks across 111 graded games. That’s an 11-game series of 66.7% to close the week. Slightly more meaningful sample size now — still below where we’d need it for confident claims (200+) but the trend is consistently above breakeven. 📊
🎯 Today’s Slate — FIVE LOCKS
Headline numbers:
⚾ 14 games on the card
🔒🔒🔒🔒🔒 5 LOCKS — the most since Monday May 25 (which famously went 0-5)
🎯 10 actionable plays (≥4%) — 5 locks + 5 strong edges
🔥 Slugfest: PIT @ HOU projected 10.83 r (highest total of the slate)
❄️ Pitchers’ duel: SF @ MIL projected 6.86 r (McDonough vs Harrison)
🌟 Big names going: Aaron Nola (PHI), Kevin Gausman (TOR), Dustin May (STL), Eric Lauer (LAD)
This is the most concentrated conviction slate the column has surfaced since the relaunch nine days ago. After a full week of 0-1 locks per day, the model is now finding huge gaps with the market all over the board.
The cautious read: the last time a 5-lock day happened (Monday May 25), all five lost. The column went 4-9 that day. The memory is fresh.
The hopeful read: that 0-5 day was with v0.2’s OPS-derived offense proxy. Today’s v0.5 model has true wRC+ from FanGraphs, real FIP, weather, and Shin de-vig. The math is sharper. The reads should be sharper too.
The honest read: we don’t know. Five locks is a lot. The variance band on a 5-lock day is enormous. Could easily go 5-0 (column makes the front page). Could easily go 0-5 (column eats its second 0-5 day). Most likely outcome: 3-2 or 2-3. Size accordingly.
🔒 The Five Locks
🎯 #1 — OAK +16.0% @ CHC (BIGGEST MORNING EDGE OF THE RUN)
Model: OAK 62.7% · Market: CHC 53.4% · Total est: 9.36 r · PF: 102
The biggest morning-edge play the column has surfaced. Direction-flip — model has OAK winning outright, market has CHC. Gage Jump vs Jameson Taillon. The model’s real-FIP composite has Jump grading much closer to Taillon than market pricing suggests, and OAK’s offense vs RHP has been better than the headline record indicates.
🎯 #2 — CWS +12.6% @ MIN (THE PET TEAM RETURNS)
Model: CWS 65.2% · Market: CWS 52.6% · Total est: 8.31 r · PF: 103
CWS is the model’s defining team. They were the right call on Tue/Wed/Thu of last week (15-2 blowout, 6-2 win). Today they’re back at +12.6% — Davis Martin vs Connor Prielipp at Target Field. The 12.6% gap is the model saying market still under-prices Davis Martin against MIN’s offense. We’ll see.
🎯 #3 — MIA +12.5% @ WSH
Model: MIA 60.3% · Market: WSH 52.3% · Total est: 9.48 r · PF: 100
Lake Bachar vs Miles Mikolas at Nationals Park. Direction-flip — market has WSH, model has MIA. Bachar’s real-FIP grades favorably; Mikolas’s veteran name brand may be over-priced. Contrarian conviction play.
🎯 #4 — KC +12.0% @ CIN (🔁 BACK-TO-BACK LOCK)
Model: KC 58.5% · Market: CIN 53.5% · Total est: 10.35 r · PF: 109
KC’s second straight day as a strong-or-better play. Yesterday they cashed 9-2 as an +8.6% strong edge. Today they’re a +12.0% LOCK against a different CIN starter (Noah Cameron vs Andrew Abbott). Same series, same park, bigger edge. This is exactly the “the model recomputes from scratch and the number went up” pattern we saw with LAA last week.
🎯 #5 — ARI +11.3% vs LAD (LAUER FADE)
Model: ARI 58.7% · Market: LAD 52.6%
Direction-flip play — market has LAD (Eric Lauer), model has ARI (Michael Soroka). The 5th lock of the day. The model is fading Eric Lauer specifically — his real-FIP and K-BB% in the v0.5 composite read meaningfully worse than the market is pricing.
📋 The Strong Edges (4-10%)
The NYY pick is the most underrated of this group. It’s the only actionable play today where the model and market AGREE on direction. The edge is purely about magnitude (75.8% vs 68.7%). Direction-agreement edges have been the column’s most reliable bucket this week — they’re the “boring solid” tier the column kept flagging Sunday and Monday. If only one of today’s 10 picks were sized larger, the case for NYY is the cleanest.
🔁 COL Update
COL is on the slate AGAIN — same LAA series, second straight day (Monday COL +5.7% cashed 9-8, today COL +9.8%).
Same arguments as Monday’s note apply: this is a real-time test of whether v0.5’s true wRC+ fix solved the COL road-bias issue from the May 24-26 streak. Monday’s win was the first positive data point. A second straight win today would make it two consecutive — small sample, but directionally meaningful. The Sugano vs Rodriguez matchup is one the model rates very differently from the market. ⛏️
⚠️ Caveats Still Apply
❌ Not betting advice. Model output. Same caveat, two weeks in.
🎰 Five locks is a LOT. The last 5-lock day went 0-5. Don’t assume the model has cracked the code — assume variance is the dominant factor and size accordingly.
📊 111 picks. 63.1% model accuracy. Still inside the noise band but with shrinking error bars. By 200 picks the true rate becomes more knowable.
🔬 v0.6 audit still pending. The split-tier backtest script (separating direction-flip vs direction-agreement edges) is the next priority. Today’s slate is a perfect dataset — 5 direction-flip locks + 1 direction-agreement strong (NYY) gives clean signal.
✅ What This Column Is, Nine Days In
A daily transparent read on where the MLB betting model and Vegas disagree. Locks that cash 10-9 in walkoffs. Locks that get shut out 8-0. COL roads that finally win after losing three in a row. Five-lock slates that history says will be a coin flip on the outcome.
The honesty is the product. Today the model surfaced more conviction than any day since the relaunch. We’ll find out by midnight whether that conviction was warranted. ⚾
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See you tomorrow. 🫡
— T&G