While there’s 12 games on Monday, including one early this afternoon, it’s a bit of a quieter slate for my first inning model. There’s a handful of pitchers who don’t have a large enough sample size to incorporate into the data, as well as relatively sharp lines around the industry. Sometimes the best bet is the one you don’t make.
That leaves us with just one officially recommended bet, but I’ll include some other leans below, as well as my justification for why I’m not betting them myself.
The process is relatively simple. First, I start by assuming that the full game (implied) run totals for either team are roughly efficient. As mentioned above, that tends to be the case more often than not. This saves me the trouble of trying to predict the total runs scored in the game — and allows me to focus strictly on the “when” rather than “how many.”