Looking for sharp sports betting action this weekend? Your curated list of tips, analytics and humor, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.
Tampa Bay Rays at Minnesota Twins, MLB – The Rays will start Taj Bradley, and the 24 year old should see some positive regression. For the season, Bradley has an ERA of 4.79 in 17 starts.
However, as Tony Sartori of the Action Network points out, the underlying metrics are stronger for Bradley. FanGraph uses advanced analytics like exit velocity of ball to get a better estimate of earned run average. Bradley has an expected ERA (xERA) of 3.70, which suggests the expected regression.
Sartori likes Tampa Bay -126 over Minnesota on the road. This price is available at FanDuel for a game that starts at 2:10pm Eastern, and Tony likes it up to -130.
College football – QB Arch Manning of Texas is the Heisman favorite, and a small sample of 96 pass attempts and sacks lets us evaluate his performance from last season. Manning had a 46.9% passing success rate, better than the 40.6% college football average. (Success rate is a key metric in my college football and NFL analysis; check out this previous newsletter for more details.)
However, Manning mostly threw pass attempts against Louisiana Monroe and Mississippi State, two poor pass defenses. In my latest college football calculations, I take a quarterback’s pass plays (not the team) and adjust for opposing defenses.
While I implemented these QB specific adjustments in the NFL a few seasons ago, this is the first calculation for college football. Manning is predicted to have a 38.4% passing success rate against an average FBS defense, lower than the 45.3% rating for Ewers.
Of course, let’s not make too much of a small sample size for Manning. However, as legend Steve Spurrier asked: if Manning is so good, why couldn’t he beat out Ewers, who ended up as a 7th round draft pick, for the starting job?
Season long NFL props – Every year, NFL analytics expert Connor Allen of 4for4 posts his long term analysis of season long NFL props. The usual message is the profitability of betting the under. Did the books adjust in 2024?
Nope. Connor’s analysis shows that the under won on 60.3% of all markets in 2024, basically the same as the 60.5% from 2023.
To check out the most profitable prop and the only prop in which the over won, check out this thread on X. In addition, follow Connor Allen for all of his NFL insights during the season.
New US law hurts sports bettors – The United States government passed a bill that changes how sports bettors get taxed. To show the problem, which will impact the 2026 tax year, let’s suppose you won $1,000,000 in bets and lost $1,000,000 in bets.
Under the old tax code, you have a net gain of $0 and owe no taxes on zero gain. However, the new bill states that only 90% of losses can be subtracted from winnings. This means that you now owe taxes on $100,000 of winnings.
Hopefully, congress will change tax code before this change takes effect. Dina Titus represents Nevada in Congress and is working these changes.
Soccer humor – Saudi Arabian club Al Hilal pulled off a shocking upset over Manchester City in the Round of 16 of the Club World Cup. Man City used oil money to get to the top of the world, but Al Hilal has a much longer oil history.
Smarter sports betting in less than 5 minutes
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