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Picks, 10|FRONTS|6|FRONTS|10

The end of the regular season was a mess, so I shut it down with about 10 days left. The final tally means that if you followed me completely on every call, you made a 25|PERCENT| return for the year. Based on the time invested, I project that the required unit size necessary to make it worthwhile for me would have been something between $200 and $300 per, requiring a bankroll of $20,000 to $30,000 as a conservative estimate.

I'll eventually get into lessons learned, I promise. Today, though, with "winning tonight's game" back as the primary goal for all the teams on the schedule, I'm back to continue the project. At least for today, I'm going to stay away from the prop bets that tend to come up for the postseason, but we may get into those a bit over the next couple of weeks. Also, series bets are available, and can be interesting value propositions.

The latter comes up when looking at the Reds/Phillies series. I think the Phillies will win, as just about everyone alive does. That said, they haven't made the Division Series matchup where one team is a 3-1 favorite over the other. The Phillies are -300 and climbing, which is just a terrible number. So with that said, you look at the flip side, the Reds at +250 (big vig at these numbers), and given that they have better than a 30|PERCENT| chance to win the series, there's value there. It's comparable to my fetish for taking big numbers in the regular season, where the odds are overstating the difference between any two teams in any one baseball game. There's value in the Reds at +250, and therefore, I think it's worth putting some units on.

The other series price that's interesting is Rays -145. The Yankees and Rays played possum in September, and I think that's affected the perception of both teams. The Rays are a lot better than the Rangers are, so much so that I have them sweeping. They'd only need to be 3-2 to win to make this bat value, and I think it's higher than that, as much as 63|PERCENT| or 64|PERCENT|.

Series picks:

Reds +250, one unit.
Rays -145, three units
Rays in three (+475), .5 units

Game Ones are hard, because the quality of the pitchers is so high. The Rays/Rangers total has slipped to 6 1/2, which is a number I often like to go over because the balance of strategies will often lead to a 3-3 tie even with good pitchers on the mound. If I like the Rays at -145 and also like them to sweep, David Price at -130 would seem to follow logically. The other two games don't have much, although I'd look at the Yankees/Twins over if it slipped to 7. The Yankees' offense and the Twins' poor range could combine for a lot of runs.

Day's picks:

Tampa Bay -130, one unit.

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