
Your curated list of sports betting tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
Offensive Rookie of the Year – ClevTA notes multiple reasons that rookie WR Quentin Johnston of the Los Angeles Charges might have a huge season:
- Johnston adds a vertical threat to the offense, and new OC Kellen Moore probably has a more aggressive offense with QB Justin Herbert.
- Veteran WR Keenan Allen and Mike Williams have a history of injuries, which should help Johnston get more targets.
In his NFL preview, ClevTA sees value in Johnston at 20-1 for Offensive Rookie of the Year. While the markets usually move the way of his bets, DraftKings still has a price of 22-1.
I highly recommend getting ClevTA’s analysis in his free NFL preview, an important part of my preseason process.
Baseball strikeout prop – The Unabated odds screen shows the strikeout market for all pitchers, a great free tool for finding value.
In MLB, the strikeout rate is roughly one batter per inning. Most strikeout props range from 4.5 to 6.5, which corresponds to the number of innings a starter usually pitches.
The Unabated odds screen makes it simple to identify high and low strikeout props that might have value. These are examples of bets on FanDuel from this past week:
- Jose Quintana over 3.5, -124 at New York Yankees, July 26 (5 strikeouts in a win)
- Tyler Glasnow under 8.5, -134 vs Miami, July 25 (8 strikeouts in a win)
- Gerrit Cole under 8.5, -128 vs Kansas City, July 22 (10 strikeouts in a loss)
For today, the odds screen suggests value in Martin Perez of Texas over 3.5 strikeouts. While he has struck out 6.0 batters per 9 innings, his ZiPS projection has his strikeout rate at 7.0. FanDuel has +102 on the over at the time of release of this newsletter.
College football predictions – These predictions come from my preseason market rankings that take win totals from Circa and back out a rating for each team.
- Notre Dame will beat Navy by 18.8 points at a neutral site. New Notre Dame QB Sam Hartmann, the transfer from Wake Forest, will open the season in Dublin, Ireland on August 26.
- Minnesota will beat Nebraska by 6.3 points at home. Matt Rhule starts his tenure at Nebraska with a tough conference game on the road.
- Utah will beat Florida by 10.2 points at home. It seems like star Utah QB Cam Rising will play in this game, but the markets have Utah -8.
Members of The Power Rank have access to all predictions for week 0 and 1 of the college football season.
Dr. Bob’s preseason college football model – Dr. Bob Sports is considered the gold standard in selling picks for his long term track record and honest record keeping. Now, the team has a podcast.
In the first episode, Bob Stoll talked about how his college football preseason model has evolved with the increasing importance of the transfer portal (this is a must listen at 31:00). Other episodes on YouTube have insights into the NFL from members of the team at Dr. Bob Sports.
Barbenheimer humor – This guy probably bets on sports.
I had the chance to see both movies last weekend. While Barbie was great, I preferred all three hours of Oppenheimer. There’s something special when a theoretical physicist gets a gritty feature film made by Christopher Nolan.
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
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