The @MLBPriceMachine - 2013 Edition

[mount187]

These are the lines for 6/7/2012:

NYM -112 or less
SD +104 or more
CIN -154 or less
HOU +125 or more

*Verified

[Vituperate]

Warning everybody. SD pick has a pitching change from Volquez to Marquis. I am sure it is a no play.

[Vituperate]

Thursday night turning out to be weird. It does not look to me like NYM or Cincy qualifies as their betting line is higher than the tru line and pitching change in SD.

That leaves Houston as a +25% pick.

The weirdest night so far.

BOL

[mount187]

These are the lines for 6/8/2012:

BOS -105 or less
TB +113 or more
SD +133 or more (Volquez)
COL +112 or more

*Verified

---

From Twitter (@MLBPriceMachine):

If you were playing $10 per % deviation ($100/150/200/250) for our last 16 plays, you'd be down $1,270. That's not great, not great at all.

[mount187]

These are the lines for 6/9/2012:

MIN -126 or less
TOR +138 or more
CWS -207 or less
CIN +129 or more
PIT -155 or less

*Verified

[SkyBlues42]

Any updates?

[mount187]

Just got en email alert on this reply; I should have posted before I left, but I'm on vacation, and haven't had time to do this. I try to post on Twitter when the lines come out since that's easiest. Between the Euro and the Finals, wifey is ready to kill me as it is, so I'll pick this back up Monday.

[Vituperate]

(06-13-2012 10:11 AM)mount187 Wrote:  Just got en email alert on this reply; I should have posted before I left, but I'm on vacation, and haven't had time to do this. I try to post on Twitter when the lines come out since that's easiest. Between the Euro and the Finals, wifey is ready to kill me as it is, so I'll pick this back up Monday.

Enjoy your time off!

[mount187]

For anyone still playing along, play at your own risk:

These are the lines for 6/19/2012:

COL +163 or higher
MIN -140 or less
ARI -168 or less
OAK -126 or less

All matchups have been verified on BOL.

[tone10]

Mount, it seems like you put a ton of work into this, and for that you should be lauded.

However, part of me can't help but feel you are making this a bit too complicated. You can incorporate and look at all of the stats you want, but when it comes down to it the guys who make the lines out in Vegas have already done so. They've taken every stat imaginable and created a power ranking for each pitcher. And all they really do is take the difference in power rankings for each pitcher, add 15 to 20 cents for home field advantage, and you've got your line. Do they make adjustments to these power ratings? Yes, they do, though they're small adjustments. Chances are if pitcher A is -130 against pitcher B, two weeks later the same line would apply.

I mention this because some of the lines I've been seeing the Price Machine throw out just don't make much sense. Here's an example from Thursday, June 14th.

Brewers (Marcum) @ Royals (Hochevar)

Your Price Machine lined this game Milwaukee -154... yet, how does that make any sense when you consider the fact that on June 2nd Marcum closed -130 at home against Erik Bedard while just a week later Hochevar closed +120 on the road against Bedard?

As I mentioned before there's typically a 15 to 20 cent adjustment from neutral to home field, which means 30 to 40 cents from one home field to another. If we take the +120 line for Hochevar on the road against Bedard and transfer that to Kansas City you get -110. So when I capped this game I was able to easily compare the -130 and -110 respective lines for Marcum and Hochevar at home against Bedard. That meant a 20 cent power rating difference for Marcum over Hochevar. Starting with a base neutral field line of -105/-105, you give the 20 cents to Marcum but then subtract 15 cents for home field since the game was in KC. That leaves you with a 5 cent edge for Milwaukee and a -110/+100 line. That's what I projected, and it actually ended up closing around -105/-105. I just didn't see how you could make the Brewers -154 road chalk... that type of road chalk is reserved for instances like yesterday, where one of the best teams in baseball (Rangers) and one of their better pitchers (Matt Harrison) visited one of the worst teams in baseball (Padres) and one of the worst pitchers in baseball (Jason Marquis). Even in that situation the line was only -170.

I looked at today's card and couldn't help but notice you only have the Phillies favored at -141. Right off the bat that's just going to be way off when you consider in Hamels last two home starts he closed -185 against Harang and the Dodgers and -155 against Nolasco and the Marlins, both superior teams and pitchers to today's opponent, Josh Outman and the Rockies.

If you feel like there's value in these plays, that's one thing... but my opinion is that a lot of these lines don't pass the "eyeball" test.

Sorry if that was long winded... but just wanted to throw my two cents in.

[mount187]

Your point is noted, and while I agree that there is some merit there, you have to remember that line makers have to factor in public perception into the lines they make. While Marcum may have only closed at -130 one week, that may have been due to MIL slumping, or KC playing well. Two weeks later, if MIL continues to slide, and KC continues to play well, you may end up seeing, as you're saying -110 each. Does that mean a matchup of Marcum vs Hochevar is really a legitimate coin-flip, or does that mean line makers just think the public is going to bet it that way? Our goal is to try to come up with a "real" statistical probability of what chance each team has to win the game, not get as close as we can to what the posted line is.

Another thing to remember is that our model factors in is regression / progression based on pre-season projected performance. We have projected performance numbers from places we feel are very good at judging a player's ability based on their past performance vs similar players' past performances. In the case of someone like Hamels, if his projections (and I'm making this up) say he should be ~3.75 "ERA" and he's carrying a 3.35, you'd expect him to have a few bad starts to get back closer to the 3.75 range. The same way, if Outman is pitching with an 8.50 ERA currently, but you project him closer to 4.85, then he'd have to have some good starts sprinkled in to drop his ERA. Now, we don't go crazy and say, "Well, he's at 8.50 now and has to get down to 4.85, so he'll probably throw 25 scoreless innings to make up the difference," we just make a mesh of the two numbers and say, if he should be pitching close to 4.85, he's probably going to be somewhere around 4.00 to 4.25 for his next few starts. We do the same thing with batters as well.

Don't feel like I'm being dismissive, or trying to dissuade you from your opinion; we certainly haven't found the magical formula (as our record would seem to indicate ...). I'm just trying to give some insight into our thought process. Feel free to respond, and we add more to the discussion; great post.

[tone10]

Your comment regarding public perception is correct. I think that's what happened in that Brewers/Royals game, because it opened Milwaukee -130 and got hammered down to the appropriate line. And it probably opened that high because of the perception that Hochevar is garbage... when in reality the guy sports a 3.86 FIP and 1.1 WAR, which isn't too shabby at all. He's just been extremely unlucky with an absurdly high .352 BABIP and equally absurdly low 59.5% LOB right, both unsustainable (mean BABIP and LOB% are around .300 and 70%). But people look at his 6.27 ERA and immediately dismiss him. Hochevar's "unluckiness" is built into his power rating. His closing lines have consistently been strong. And a quick glance of those closing lines and I could easily tell right away that the -130 for Milwaukee was still too high. I ended up betting Royals +120 that game and created a nice 25 cent edge as they closed around -105.

The fact that you are projecting future performance into your lines is probably where you and I differ. Every day I go through the card and create my own line by comparing each's starters past lines and coming up with a difference, just like I did with Marcum and Hochevar in my previous post. When doing so I could care less about future performance... I only care about what each guy is right now. Almost always my projected line ends up being 5 to 15 cents within the closing line. Where I'm able to take advantage is when perception causes an inflated opening line and I can exploit. All of my plays are bet at the open the day before. I don't make any plays the actual day of the game.

For you, it seems you are going the route of trying to project where guys have underperformed or overperformed and trying to catch value that way. Sort of like buying low and selling high. Nothing wrong with that, but I think maybe you should incorporate a human element to your Price Machine to weed out those plays that just don't seem right (such as the Brewers/Royals game I keep mentioning).

[mount187]

(06-19-2012 09:03 AM)tone10 Wrote:  All of my plays are bet at the open the day before. I don't make any plays the actual day of the game.

We do the same thing with our lines. Our picks are posted within the first 2-3 minutes of BetOnline releasing their lines for the next day (assuming one of us is near a PC).

(06-19-2012 09:03 AM)tone10 Wrote:  For you, it seems you are going the route of trying to project where guys have underperformed or overperformed and trying to catch value that way. Sort of like buying low and selling high. Nothing wrong with that, but I think maybe you should incorporate a human element to your Price Machine to weed out those plays that just don't seem right (such as the Brewers/Royals game I keep mentioning).

I understand your point, and we've always maintained that people should use their own judgement when interpreting our lines. We're only giving out probabilities based on our automated interpretation of the statistics. We may tweak the model from time to time, but once the model is in place, it's all automated. All we do is report what it spits out. You can find several posts in this thread, on Twitter, and even on the site (I think) that recommend using your own human judgment to supplement the lines we create.

Also, somewhat related to your point about keying off opening lines: we recently had a streak of 20+ days where we were +EV on lines we took against the opening line. That doesn't mean every play we made was +EV, but as an aggregate for the day, we had the lines move in our favor for over three straight weeks (Verlander against the Cubs went against us by like -.50, and ended the streak). You can check our daily +/- EV on the Tracking page on the site, we make all of that information public.

One last thing, the Price Machine was never intended to be an end-all to crush sports books world wide. hahaha Originally we wrote it for ourselves, as a way to automate the stats collection process, and give us statistical numbers as a basis for our own personal handicapping. Once we had it done, we looked around and thought, "There are probably some people out there that don't have any idea how to begin making their lines, who could really benefit from this." That's why we chose to go public with it. It literally costs us money to keep the site going, and we've generated $0 in revenue from our work. Hopefully, at the end of the season, we're in the black, and people have enjoyed betting baseball season with us. At the very least, hopefully the loss less than they would have doing it on their own. hahaha

[mount187]

These are the lines for 6/20/2012:

STL +102 or more
CIN +112 or more
COL +122 or more
BOS -164 or less
OAK -117 or less

[mount187]

These are the lines for 6/21/2012:

MIN +130 or better

[LuDawgs]

Cool, thanks for the heads up. Followed.

[mount187]

(06-20-2012 01:52 PM)LuDawgs Wrote:  Cool, thanks for the heads up. Followed.

May not be thinking me tomorrow; we've been ice cold. hahaha

[LuDawgs]

(06-20-2012 01:58 PM)mount187 Wrote:  

(06-20-2012 01:52 PM)LuDawgs Wrote:  Cool, thanks for the heads up. Followed.

May not be thinking me tomorrow; we've been ice cold. hahaha

There's value in being ice cold, since there are always 2 sides to a bet (if not 3).

[LuDawgs]

...and another thing. This concept is an example of thinking outside of the box - which is really nothing more than creative problem solving - the ability to arrive at new solutions by looking beyond obvious or traditional approaches. If you're creative enough, you'll find that the most traditional problems contain the solution. In this way, successful creative people don't see problems as problems at all - they see them as opportunities.

I personally love the fact that you put this together and are stepping out on the edge to assume some risk (if only reputational). Being open to risk (and thus failure) is crucial. Not to get too philosophical or corny, but we can only truly learn to develop when we push ourselves outside of our comfort zones. If you only ever do what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you won't fail. You'll just stagnate, and your work will get less and less interesting, and that's failure by erosion. Where's the fun in that?

The material difference between those that throw darts at the "doers" and those that accept risk of failure is that those who accept risk see failure as a badge of accomplishment because it means that they took a risk, they tried something new. I'm looking forward to seeing how your concept develops. Props for doing something new.

[mount187]

Definitely not easy to take a public whipping like we have for the last month, but one of my goals with this project was to be as transparent as possible in hopes of setting a new standard for openness with our results (as our process as much as we can). Unfortunately, that means taking it on the chin when things aren't going well. Either way, hopefully we'll at least be able to point to what we've created and say, "You don't have to lie or cheat people to be a part of this industry." I'm actually about 90% done with an update to our tracking (that I've been working on for a while and can't find time to finish) that should be another step in the right direction for providing a model for transparency. Of course, you can have all the transparency you want, but in the end winning is what matters; hopefully that turns around sooner rather than later, because my bankroll is getting pretty pissed at me.