Nate Silver is the Bill James of political analysts

 "Just as James did for baseball, Silver taught us how to look at presidential campaigns analytically."

from

https://economystupid.substack.com/

No surprise. Nate Silver wrote for and owned a share of Baseball Prospectus before he turned his talents to analyzing elections.

https://www.baseballprospectus.com/  

MLB Inter-league 2024

National League (NL) teams are besting their American League (AL) rivals 46 wins to 41 (53%-47%) in the 2024 chapter of Major League Baseball's (MLB's) inter-league rivalry. 

AL East teams are 17-10 (63%) against NL squads so far in 2024, even better than their recent past record of dominating NL opponents. AL East teams won 56.6% of inter-league games from 2020 through 2023. 

The AL has won 16 of the last 20 inter-league seasons (with All-Star and World Series matches included in the counts). After 14 consecutive AL triumphs from 2004 through 2017, the NL won the inter-league contest for 3 consecutive years from 2018 through 2020 and won again last year in 2023. 

The "brain gap" between AL and NL team managements shrunk over the years. It now appears to have disappeared completely thanks to the brain drain of smarty-pants and smarty-skirt executives who started with AL squads before crossing over to manage NL teams. 

The AL has also won 9 of the past 10 all-star contests, 21 of the last 25 to reach a decision and 27 of 34. 

None of this information is useful for betting purposes. Gambling odds are almost never fair for gamblers. 

Bye, Bye Belicheat

Belicheat was Don Shula's affectionate nickname for former New England Patriots’ Coach Bill Belichick, who was fired 15 wins short of Shula’s National Football League (NFL) record for career regular season wins. Of course, if we include playoff victories, Belicheat is much closer to Shula. 

NFL Picks ATS: 2023-4 Wrap-up

Thanks Muchas gracias to Vivek Ramaswamy for his Super Bowl pick: KC +1.5 over san fran.

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1751740881751724329

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/01/31/super-bowl-taylor-swift-travis-kelce-conspiracy-theories/a3980d7e-c08c-11ee-a4c6-8f5c350e9316_story.html

My Super Bowl pick was also based on the persuasive case from Professor Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame that NFL bettors would do better if they realized that underdogs consistently best overdogs ATS over long periods and that the Super Bowl underdog is the best bet of the year. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/05/magazine/dissecting-the-line.html 

During the 2023 regular season, underdogs were 127-137-8 or 48% against the spread (ATS) = 82-86-3 road underdogs + 45-51-5 home underdogs (normally the best bet in sports over many years). Overdogs won the regular season for only the 7th time in the past 32 years.

Based on the historical record, I will not abandon my all-underdogs strategy after one bad year.

Toy boy Archibald has retired his NFL ATS pool due to volunteer work taking up all his time even to the point of neglecting me. With Arch barely in my life, (and even more barely barely, if you know what I mean, nudge nudge wink wink) I joined another pool and picked all underdogs all year long. A simple all-underdogs strategy recorded 25 winning regular seasons over the past 32, a track record significant to statheads (to borrow one of Arch's catch-phrases). I finished 3rd out of 65 players in the pool in 2022. This year I finished tied for 36th out of 57. However, I was pleased to finish 1st in week 14.

I am not aware of any evidence showing most playoff matches to be different in the regular season. Our pool continues during the playoffs and I stuck with all underdogs during the wild card round going 4-2 = 2-0 home underdogs + 2-2 road underdogs. 

I never pick favourites except for the No. 1 seeds in the divisional round. Teams with a bye going into the playoffs win about 3/4 of matches straight-up. I doubt that the point spreads reflect the full advantage that should be accorded No. 1 seeds, but I have no evidence to substantiate my gut feeling. I went 1-1 ATS this year with home overdogs No. 1 seeds in the 1/4 final divisional round. They were 2-0 straight-up. Road underdogs went 1-1. 

In the conference championship semi-final round, I went 2-0 with my underdog picks. So, for once, a winning playoff record ATS this year = 9-4 = 2-0 home underdogs + 5-3 road underdogs + 1-1 home overdogs + 1-0 Super Bowl.