We’re onto day two. Nothing crazy happened yesterday. But we did have exciting games until the nightcap. It was a super low-scoring day until the Dodgers got involved. And then Ohtani and Teoscar Hernandez hit two homers each and the Dodgers embarrassed the Reds, who are now without Hunter Greene and needing to win two straight games in Dodgers Stadium.
I have started the World Series Odds by Day plot:
The line plots are always ugly until you have 5+ data points. So the Phillies went from 19% to 18% without even playing a game. The Dodgers are now the favorite, leaping the Phililes and Mariners with their game one win. The books and bettors clearly think they are truly the best team, they just had the disadvantage of having to win two games to advance.
The biggest change was the Yankees going from an 11% shot to a 6% shot. That would jump back up to around 10% with a win tonight. I’ll keep this plot updated as we go.
I think all five of my recommended player props lost yesterday. I hate when I do that. I’ll be okay, but I don’t like making other people lose. Hopefully you knew better than to take my word for it.
But the DFS stuff was a smash. You did have to tweak the optimal lineup slightly after we saw that Michael Conforto didn’t make the lineup, but with a quick switch from Conforto to Nate Eaton, the lineup scored 172.5 points.
I didn’t even bother to change Sal Stewart to another player after the Reds lineup came out, but that probably worked out for the best. This lineup was 5th in the $5 Hundo (5/100) and it landed 13th of 400 in the double up I played.
I also rammed in 60 optimizer-generated lineups into a couple of tournaments. And one of those 60 ended up winning the $1 MLB $1.5K Solo Shot.
The model liked the Dodgers against Hunter Greene. The optimal SP combo was Skubal and Crochet, and they both went well above the rst of the SP field for 44 and 39 points respectively.
So it worked out nicely for me. I had very little Hunter Greene and a lot of Dodgers.
Let’s get into day two! It’s the same schedule as yesterday.
We start with Mize against Bibee. Quite a large step backward from Skubal vs. Williams.
Shout out to Gavin Williams, by the way. He was incredible, and his draft stock is jumping up in a hurry for 2026. We will examine that some time in December in the Guardians’ preview.
Casey Mize
You could say Mize finally had his breakout season. That might be a bit too generous as he finished with a 3.87 ERA and a 1.27 WHIP. But he was a legitimate big league starter, and we haven’t seen that from him before. He went for a 4.57 ERA and a 1.48 WHIP in 102 innings in 2024, so this was nice.