Your weekly dose of sports betting tips and news, each Saturday at 10am Eastern.

Dodgers Futures – No conversation about this year’s World Series would be complete without mentioning the likelihood that the Boys in Blue win the pennant and a world championship. After all, the Dodgers have consistently had one of the better pitching staffs in MLB, whether it’s looking at basic box score numbers like ERA or Statcast metrics like xwOBA.

But, is it wise to invest in L.A. futures given how big a favorite they are? I broke down this idea in my latest FOX Sports piece and concluded now is not the best time. For starters, randomness makes their odds too expensive.

More importantly, there is value in San Diego to win the division (+330 on FanDuel). Not only are they also near the top of the N.L. West standings, they will get Fernando Tatis, Jr. back in June or July and are already getting an MVP-caliber season out of Manny Machado.

Indy 500 – “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing” will take place Sunday for the 106th time in its storied history. Not only does Scott Dixon have the pole position with one of the fastest times in qualifying history, he is one of the favorites (+650 on FanDuel, tied with Alex Palou for the shortest odds).

There’s another driver with a resume as impressive as anyone’s who may be challenging to handicap: Jimmie Johnson (+2100 on FanDuel, an increase in win probability from +2400). The seven-time NASCAR Cup Series champion will make his debut at this race, starting on the outside of the fourth row.

How well do stock car driving skills translate to open-wheel racing? Other NASCAR drivers have finished as well as sixth (Tony Stewart and Kurt Busch), but as The Athletic pointed out, Johnson finished sixth at Texas Motor Speedway in his only other IndyCar start.

The story behind DARKO – Kostya Medvedovsky wanted to be a mathematician. However, he found it difficult to get into a PhD program because of his grades, which caused a lack of support from his professors. Instead, Kostya crushed the LSAT and was accepted at the University of Michigan law school.

As a patent lawyer, Kostya got interested in the NBA, and he developed the well respected DARKO projection system. On an episode of The Football Analytics Show, he talked about how machine learning weaves together two different models, one of which originated in helping rocket scientists get to the moon.

Since DARKO is essentially a PhD mathematics project, the joke is on Kostya’s undergraduate professors.

Time to Back the Oilers? – While Colorado and Tampa Bay remain among the favorites to win the Stanley Cup, Edmonton is making a push (+550 per FanDuel). In roughly half of their playoff games, the Oilers have scored at least five goals.

Granted, the sample size is small going up against only two teams, but Money Puck has tracked individual expected goals per 60 minutes and found that three of the top six skaters are Oilers: Evander Kane, Connor McDavid and Zach Hyman. That Leon Draisaitl is also capable of producing suggests Edmonton will be a tough out the rest of the way.

Game 1 between Edmonton and Colorado starts on Tuesday.

The sports betting business – The Betstamp app makes money from affiliate deals with sports books. Betstamp sends the book customers, the book pays Betstamp a fixed amount per customer.

Betstamp will not take an affiliate deal in which they earn a fraction of the lifetime losses of a customer. In fact, Rob Pizzola, one of the co-owners of Betstamp, said they would not even accept a higher fee for a customer more likely to lose.

On an episode of the Bet the Process podcast, Rob talked about how Betstamp’s primary goal is to help players win. Because of this belief, Betstamp is unwilling to take certain types of affiliate deals even if this lowers revenue.

This episode of Bet the Process also had a multitude of thoughts from hosts Jeff Ma and Rufus Peabody on ethics in the sports betting business (yeah, they talked about touts).

Criticizing Analytics – On AppleTV+ baseball broadcasts, viewers are given probabilities at the bottom of the screen of a variety of outcomes from the next pitch (in an unobtrusive way). But, as you know, there are many ways to arrive at these probabilities. Are the ones these broadcasts giving the most accurate?

FanGraphs decided to analyze how well the AppleTV+ broadcasted model stacked up against other approaches, and found some serious discrepancies. This experiment is significant because if telecasts deliver probabilities that are wildly off, it will create doubters of any quantitative analyses, not to mention further criticisms that America’s Pastime has lost touch.

NBA Finals – “More Ways to Win” will have a special NBA Finals edition Thursday, June 2nd. Catch air times and clips on Twitter @EdWithSports and @MoreWaysToWinTV.

With so many blowouts these playoffs, perhaps the value in betting individual games is either taking the favorite to cover or the underdog on the moneyline. The reasons for the blowouts are complex, but as NBA betting legend Haralabos Voulgaris suggested, teams are placing too much emphasis on shooting threes, not resting sufficiently and naturally succumbing to variance.

Data driven betting information

These nuggets were sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter. This is a free service that strives to be:

• Valuable
• Concise
• Entertaining

While the emphasis is on the NFL and college football, this newsletter covers golf, baseball and basketball during the off season.

In addition, if you sign up for the newsletter, you get a free pdf copy of The Logic of Sports Betting by Ed Miller and Matthew Davidow.

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Your weekly dose of sports betting tips and news, every Saturday at 10am Eastern.

PGA Championship win probabilities – Will Zalatoris always seems to show up at the majors. In the 25 year old’s short career, he has four top 10 finishes at majors, which includes a 2nd at the 2021 Masters.

Zalatoris is looking to break through at the PGA Championship. After two rounds, he leads the field at -9. On Saturday morning, FanDuel has his win odds at +230 (30.3% break even probability).

Mito Pereira (-8) is in second, but the markets give Justin Thomas (-6) the second best odds to win at +380 (20.8% break even probability).

The art of bookmaking – When Matt Metcalf first got hired at a sports book, he had one firm belief. Unlike other Las Vegas books, he wasn’t going to open a number, take some bets, and then move towards the market consensus.

Instead, Matt decided that he needed an idea of where the market was headed no matter what appeared on the Don Best screen. In his early days, he challenged himself to book without looking at the market consensus.

On a fantastic episode of The Football Analytics Show, Matt also discussed how he opens the first college football spreads and totals on Sunday morning and the one thing he would change in the sports betting world.

NBA Injuries – Miami has a few players who are questionable to play Game 3 at Boston:

• forward P.J. Tucker (knee)
• guard Max Strus (hamstring)
• guard Gabe Vincent (hamstring)
• point guard Kyle Lowry (hamstring)

Lowery hasn’t played since game 4 against the Sixers in the last series, but the other three player logged significant minutes in game 2.

Boston forward Sam Hauser will not play Game 3 because of a shoulder injury.

Golden State guard Gary Payton II continues to be doubtful to play in the Western Conference Finals.

NFL Strength of Schedule – Last week on the Nuggets, we discussed which teams earned advantages based on rest relative to opponents. But, there are two added dimensions to unequal schedules: how much more traveling some teams must endure and how challenging the home schedule is.

NFL Data Scientist Tom Bliss analyzed all 32 schedules and concluded Philadelphia has the most advantageous schedule. There may be value in taking the Eagles at +210 (FanDuel) to win the NFC East.

The New York Giants, Detroit and Chicago round out the top four. While they all have long odds to win their divisions, making the playoffs or going over their win totals might make more sense.

Preakness Stakes – Epicenter won’t have to worry about Rich Strike stealing his thunder this time! Just like in the Kentucky Derby, Epicenter is the morning line favorite, now at 6-5. Drawing post 8 may also seem like it would help this colt, as there is likely less traffic to slow down a push to the front.

However, Neil Greenberg made a compelling case why Simplification may be a more prudent bet at 6-1, despite starting at post 1. Normally starting on the inside is often problematic because there’s no room to run and not enough early speed to take an early lead. However, at the Preakness, no one post position has a significantly bigger advantage than another.

Also, if you firmly believe the longshot can win again, Fenwick is 50-1.

How a betting group comes together – As Mark DeRosa walked to his car, he noticed a guy was following him. This guy with blond hair didn’t look that threatening, but he did seem to be getting closer.

It also seemed a little creepy that Mark had seen this guy in sports books around Las Vegas. Mark put his hand on the mace that he carried.

This encounter was the first time Rufus Peabody talked with his future betting partner Mark. An episode of The Risk of Ruin podcast tells the story of this betting group. While it features interviews with Mark and Rufus, Risk of Ruin feels like listening to This American Life in its production value.

Them’s Fightin’ Words – Alabama head coach Nick Saban and Texas A&M head coach Jimbo Fisher–who used to work for Saban–got into a public spat over NILs this week. Saban claimed the Aggies “bought every player” in their prized recruiting class, and Fisher responded by insinuating Saban has a checkered past with recruiting, he thinks he’s God and he should be slapped.

Until college football figures out its future in this NIL era, the good folks at SEC Shorts want to keep fanning the flame.

Data driven betting information

These nuggets were sent to The Power Rank’s email newsletter. This is a free service that strives to be:

• Valuable
• Concise
• Entertaining

While the primary emphasis is NFL and college football, the newsletter covers golf and baseball during the off season.

In addition, you get a free pdf download of The Logic of Sports Betting by Ed Miller and Matthew Davidow for signing up.

To get this free service delivered straight into your inbox, enter your best email address and click on “Sign up now!”