A Numbers Game | February 24, 2026 | Hour 3

0:00This is Vincent, the sports betting network. The numbers told the story now is down. Swindles idiots who believe in analytics. This is a numbers game with Gillibexander, gone Vincent. Our number three of a numbers game at Vincent, the sports betting network, visa.com, game plus IHR radio, YouTube TV. And of course, Series X of Channel 158, Gillibexander. Kelly Millen. A little buddy, Kelly Millen everybody still losing weight. Yeah. You got to stop, man. Come on. What are you trying to prove now? I'm trying to get under 200. Oh, okay. Yeah. That was a new goal. I didn't know that was your. That was the next one always. Yeah. What do you like eight pounds away? Yeah. Exactly. Wow. This kid. Exactly. And what were before 843 pounds? I'm like, 316. We started this. Wow. Unbelievable. Everybody. We're out of applause for Kelly. Billy Bennett. Let's go. Just me. Oh, it's just you.

1:00Sorry. It was only you in this studio. We get, there we go. There we go back there. We get tweets. Maybe the book. I was appreciate the feedback. This is from DeGeneres Southern Gent. Can't believe it sits across blew it for us. And what was essentially his Super Bowl. Yeah. He loves that tournament. Think he's been to the finals three years in a row until his. Special numbers game investigation reveals that if he loses his opening round match at Indian Wells, he'll no longer be ranked in the top 50. This guy is a mess. Yeah, man. He, though he went, though he has been playing better this year than he has been. Wow. But that's a, that's a loss today. That's not going to help. Also, DeGeneres Southern Gent points out, shout out to American player Patrick Kipson. Yes. There's a big win last night in Acapulco over world number six. Alex Dimonore. I would have never seen that coming. Preflop or in game in match. Jordan Paykel. I'm not excited to try and step in front of the Otony MVP train. But if I am, it's going to be someone at long odds. Peter Kerr Armstrong 45 to one or Jackson Merrill at 66 to one are awfully tempting. Yeah. Again, it's just that you're dealing with this thing that's so different from everybody else.

2:03But I hear you. I would agree with the sentiment that you should go big or go at all. Matt Brown said something similar last week about it. I agree. It's hard to argue with you guys. Wait, what are you going to do? You're going to bet that price or you're going to get in front of that? Like, have fun. It's just, it's just this. We could, we could, you know, go on and on about it. But what's the point? Hey, Rale, did I miss the brain dead NBA parlay? Oh, yes, you did. I gave it out the beginning of the show. I'll give it out now again. I added Houston last night against the jazz. So it's a little bit of plus money on a four teamer for me. But if even if you do it as the three teamer this morning, which is what we'll consider it for our record keeping, as we start these brain dead parlay's sixers hawks hornets for me minus 127. So you're, you're basically getting like 78 cents issue on the dollar here. On this sixers hawks hornets sixers taking on the Pacers hawks taking on the wizards. Cornets taking on the Chicago bulls. So that's the brain dead parlay of the day.

3:04Tag of on 2026. And then Hobbs at David six four to three says a Jake again, Jake on showing an example of why he's one of the top analysts in North America. King knowledge and insight. Great feel for the game and humble. We love Jake. That's for sure. All right. So we lost the Sitzposs match. The other one. We are in a third set. Macchock and popper. So we'll see if we can split these this morning as opposed to the oh and two. But that's what we're facing right now in a dog fight and set number three. So we got that going for us. I looked up in my eyeballs hurt now. What's wrong with this? Yeah. You're a spotting man. Yeah. It's a very very some glasses in here. What was that? And I felt not with you just popped up there. Moments ago. What do I say? I don't know. The constant rotation. And I fell news. Yeah. I think we got I think I got caught up on all of them. All right. Let's do this here with the NFL because I mentioned this earlier as well. Most wins, fewest wins. Most wins, fewest wins. So to win totals are out. National football league.

4:04And again, the headline was no team had a win total of more than 10 and a half. You know, how many again, Danny? 10, 10, 10 teams. Whoo. Tensies more than a quarter of the league was lined to 10 and a half, but no team higher than 10 and a half. That has never happened before. Someone's going to tell me yes it did 19 for you know, something like that. But I don't ever remember that happening. There was always one team above that. Minimum. If not two. Most wins. Another way to bet this. Rams are nine to one. This is NFL. Not just conference. You win totals tomorrow. These were just recently posted though to go over the weekend. This is most wins. Rams are. Rams are nine to one. Seahawks. I don't know if you know this Kelly defending Super Bowl champion Seahawks. Plus 950. Ravens also plus 950. Ravens. We're going to make them a thing again. That surprised you though. A little bit. Yeah, me too. That's why I said they're going to make them a thing again. Me too. Sorry, Danny. Lions and bills both 10 to one. Packers 12 to one. Eagles Chiefs 13 to one.

5:06Will Patrick Mahomes start the season or not? We don't know. Chargers 16 to one 9 or 17 to one. This is. But I, you know, I hate to do this on the, on the heels of what I just said about. Not wanting to bet NL MVP because show Hayes there. Is there any team you feel strongly enough to bet in a market like this? I'm so glad you just weren't that way. No, no, absolutely not. No, no, and here's the, here's the, here's the unfortunate part though too. I don't think you can. You also can't be like, man, if you're going to bet into this, like bet a long shot. Like, no, it's like probably one of the teams that we're staring at. You know, could you make a case for every team here on the board? Sure. Sure you could, right? Let's, let's do it in five seconds or less. What other 10 and a half. Are we busy? Oh, no, no, but it's, it's all 10 teams. Okay, that's all 10 teams. Those are the 10 teams and 10 and a half, right? Thanks so. Isn't that interesting though? There's going to be juice that is, that is different. Yes. It's the most wins it goes from nine to one all the way to 17 to one.

6:06Niners, well, it won't be as hurt next year. Chargers, all their offensive line won't be as hurt next year. Chiefs, oh, they're getting my homes back. Eagles, oh, they're just a year removed from being awesome and winning it all. Packers, oh, the packers every year. It's all the packers. Bills, Josh Allen just needs a little help. Lions, they're just a year away from being 15 and two. Ravens. There's just a couple of years away from having the MVP. Seahawks to any champs. Rams might have been the best team. Certainly the second best team. You can say all that, but are any of those, is any of that reasoning sound enough for you to actually make a wager? Yeah. My answer is no. No, I'm with you. The best reasoning I have. The other thing is, like these divisions, right? Like these divisions. NFC North is brutal. The NFC West is brutal. The AFC West is brutal. Like, my eyes immediately would go to my, my usual. Oh, the note that, the note that my, my score like attention saw now that you bring it up to the division stuff. The Steelers say they're open to having Aaron Rodgers back. He knows how we feel about them, about how we feel about that one's going to be very

7:08interesting to monitor here, because that's the, how long can you let Aaron Rodgers hold your offseason hostage, right? There is a, there's got to be a cutoff point. Hopefully they've had that. Is that why they hired Mike McCarty? I keep asking. I'm the same way. Yeah. I kind of think yes, like I tend to think a little bit, it completely goes against their brand otherwise. Yeah. There are three coach history brand of young defensive coaches, whether it's Noel, Kauer, Tomlin. I don't think I'm screwing this up that met like hiring young coach. Yeah. Like Matt, Matt said last week, he didn't think you'd be back. And I was like, who Rodgers? Yeah. And I was like, I'm a little surprise. Like I'm a little surprised. You're that sure of that when they just hired McCarty, because I actually think that does go hand in hand a little bit just to finish this one off. Like if I had to make a bet, it'd be Buffalo, but it's because the division, it's just did everybody. No, no, I know you would everybody laughing, but like everybody else on this screen brings it a tough division.

8:08Like I at least get the jets and dolphins for Josh Allen to just barrel through. First of all, it was a Washington guy. Thank you so much for including the Eagles in that. I appreciate that. Not sure if you had Washington in mind, but whatever. Yes, but you're right. Oh, I have no idea what to make. And the NFC's NFC West, complete bottleneck, despite producing the champion. It's still the most competitive, right? The lions and bears, oh my, right? Yeah. You're right. I mean, the bills still have the clearest path. Yeah. And the patriots are sitting there. Hey, we were just in the Super Bowl. You also play the 17. You also play the third easiest schedule in the history. Yeah. But you know, you see a lot of NFC West, a lot of NFC North and AFC West on here, right? Like that. It's going to be tough. Now we do the market. Thank you. And I care about. Oh, we love it. Fused. Not to be, not to be confused with least wins, which would be poor English. Fewest wins. Kelly, nobody likes an English teacher. Dolphins plus 380, Cardinals plus 390, they have the lowest season win totals, four and

9:10a half, I believe, as they're seeing more totals. Dolphins who are just cleaning house plus 380, Cardinals plus 390, Raiders, five to one, congratulations. Raiders, you're not at the bottom here. Jets six to one Raiders Jets have the one and two picks in the NFL draft, at least as of this moment. And then everybody else's double digits, Browns, 12 to one, Panthers, 18 to one, out rude. That's very rude. Titans, 20 to one, Giants, 20 to one, Falcons and Commanders, next. That's rude also there for both of those two teams. Stop it. Anyway, this one of the short shots again. This is a short. However, this one I could see myself betting into sooner than later, just based on how some of these quarterback moves happen with the Dolphins and Cardinals. I mean, look, no matter what we want to say about two on Kyler, do you think whoever's replacing them as an upgrade? I don't, I don't know that that's the case. I mean, you're talking about, I already feel bad for Mendoza going to the Raiders.

10:10Sorry, Raiders. I do. There's that too. I mean, look, Raiders and Jets definitely on the radar here too, to see how they fill out their roster. I don't think the Browns are in play for this. I don't think Gil, just because of how bad those four other rosters are. Head of them. However, I think the, the first win total that jumped out to me was like Browns are six and a half, six and a half wins, six, should doors, Sanders is your started quarterback. What would it or it would you tell them, we don't even know who's playing offensive line for the team. Like they don't have a receiver like man, there's a lot of confidence seemingly, seemingly in this Cleveland roster compared to the other bottom feeders. Browns 12 to one Titans 20 to one. I could, I could be interested in either of those. That was another one. Who did, who did we hear it from last off season? Was it cleave? Matt said, Matt said it too. He was a little bit higher on the Titans heading into this year. And I'm like, man, I think I'm at a point where I'm going to have to see that first. The giants I can get on board with, well, I think I think you found who your quarterback is. You've got neighbors there, a wide receiver.

11:12You got a couple good pieces on the offensive line. They're good in the trenches, right? The offense line's got a couple of, oh yeah, you mean they're, so you would not consider them as a good team. Yes, yes, yes. I agree with that. I thought you were going the other way. That's what I'm saying. Titans, I think are probably still in this conversation for me. But there were like Matt, Matt thought they were out of this. I don't know about, you know, people love to gleam onto the Titans, not just Matt, right? Cleave didn't last year. That's what I'm saying. We'll bet them on the mega pot a couple of years ago all the time. Brown's 12 to one Titans 20 to one. Those are what we'd consider for sure. Other wind total that jumped out to be one of the panthers is six and a half again. Like a studio. Do anything about this team? Like, I don't like that good. Under Joe Pita, oh, baseball handicapers. You do not want to miss this. Cannot wait. On the other side, it's a numbers game at Visa. You're here because you want an edge. That's what separates listeners from winners, but let's be real mindset alone doesn't get bets home. Pros win because they've got the tools, the data and the discipline. And now so can you. Visa Pro gives you access to the same real time insights the sharps use. No secrets.

12:12No fluff. Just actionable info that moves markets. Tap the link and see why serious bettors are turning knowledge into profit with Visa and Pro. If you are betting college hoops now's the time to get your edge right now, you can get Visa Pro access through May 1st for just $29.99 with our hoops, mania special. Visa Pro gives you daily best bets, real time betting splits from draft kings and circa, AI powered prop tools and full access to every Visa show on demand. You also get our March, mania betting guide, pack with team breakdowns, betting trends, future strategies and picks from Visa's top analysts. If you're planning to bet college hoops, Visa Pro gives you a real edge, sign them now at visa.com slash subscribe always a pleasure to have this gentleman on I gave the full intro earlier. I'll do it again. It's sort of the 30 second version, which again is Joe Peter first came to my attention over a decade ago.

13:13He was writing blogs about all 30 major league baseball teams and I was like, who is this guy? This is fantastic stuff. He's a Wall Street guy by trade and he ended up at ESPN, chalk doing baseball and then later segwayed into, by the way, he was an author as well, trading bases after his convolescence after an accident. That sort of led him towards a handicapping baseball, but then after baseball, he drifted towards master's golf where he wrote a book about analytics and Augusta, then he went back to his wheelhouse, if you will, doing the, the sort of analysis of portfolio managers, money ball for the money, set his latest book and now a triumphant return to baseball. What's this? Joe Peter joins us now. You can follow him on Twitter at Magic Rat SF courtesy of the progressive guest line. Joe, good morning to you, sir. Thank you, Joe. And I appreciate you giving me the same mock monitor that Kelly was giving you all

14:14last week with the triumphant return. Yes. All returns are triumphant. Do you imagine if it was like a very, very losing return, no, you didn't do that. Why the return to baseball, let's start there. Well, it, I actually have a role in the financial industry again that really overlaps with gaming. And we won't, you know, talk about that here, but you know, anybody can go to a LinkedIn profile and see what I'm talking about. So I'm, I'm very tied into that world right now. And, you know, so, and with prediction markets getting so much more play and obviously becoming more mainstream within this world that I'm in, I, you know, I thought I'd use time to really sort of get, you know, really get back into this world and see how these different markets are, you know, are playing out. Well, let's, let's talk. Let's do some building blocks here for those who are interested in handicapping baseball. Let's start with the total wins market vis-a-vis projections.

15:14What did you want to say about that? Yeah. And that's another reason to like, Gil, why were we in it? These got posted at Fandall, I think mid-December. Yeah. So like it, it's, it's, remember you and I, we used to wait for the Atlantis in Reno to post the first market sort of mid-February now and earlier, the date is better than ever. We used to have to wait to get like Pekota projections from baseball prospectus, the almost closer to opening day. And now you can go to Fand Graphs and it's been up all 2026, you can get five different projection systems ready for fingertip. So it's easier to do it earlier than ever. And one thing I have noticed in some discussions is, and this is sort of the first building block, if you pull up any projection system right now, the first thing you'll notice, and I've heard this talked about on similar shows like yours. The first thing you'll notice is, the good teams all look like unders, and the bad teams all look like overs, because all the projection teams essentially are over on the, on the

16:16bad teams and, and under on the good teams. And the question, you know, you'll, people kind of mues is like, are they, can they both be right? Like, are they, which one is right? Should I just have a basket of unders on the good teams and the opposite to the bad teams and the answer is no. They are both right, and it's important to know what a projection is versus what a total wins market is, and it's simply mean versus medium. Your projection systems are trying to minimize forecast error, and therefore they do that by having, you know, you always see 10,000 simulations, right? It's the average of all of those 10,000 simulations, and it's not a normal distribution. I don't know what the term is, maybe it's poison, you know, but I do know it's bunched, it'll have a tail for good teams to the right, bunched to the left, and opposite for the bad teams, whereas if you're betting a minus 110, minus 110 total wins market, all you care about is the medium. And so that's the difference, mean versus medium, don't look at these projection systems

17:17and think that, you know, the, the unders on the good teams are, you know, are plus EV just because all the projection systems are lower. Alert all the listeners again, the old drug drug sort of, you know, anti drug commercials of the 80s. This is our brain, footballs are brain on crack, but this is always our handicapping brain on baseball. Let's talk about a couple terms that I use, I'll point at myself in the, in the interest of being expeditious on a radio show on a podcast, I'll go longer on this, but because of commercials on a radio show, I sort of have to edit my words, have that an economy of words. And I throw around stuff and I don't really drill down, so this is a great example. There's a great time to do this. Bill James Pythagorean theorem, which I always very quickly say runs produced runs allowed. Trust me, tried and true formula, it gives you an expected win percentage in there for an expected record, what you should have been in other words. But you can actually quantify that based on runs produced and runs allowed, what actually

18:17equates to a win. Yeah, so that's it, that's a great, it's the, it's the first building block and it's a great one. And Bill James is a genius for realizing, squaring both those terms, that's why you call it the Pythagorean theorem, because it has squared terms, you know, produces this and you correctly said it doesn't produce the amount of wins. It produces the winning percentage. And of course, people have gone a little further, Clay Davenport was the first one to say, at two is an exactly the right ex, ex, ex opponent should be a little lower. I think there was a guy named Pat Smith maybe, so that's the Pythagian Pat that has a more elegant formula and, and you, everybody can look that up. But what it comes to, Gil is why, you know, we do know that runs scored and runs allowed is a better indication of true team talent than their actual win loss record. And, but the, the insight from that is if you do a little spreadsheet work and you put that Pythagian Pat formula into a spreadsheet with league average runs and leagues average

19:20runs scored and allowed, of course, you'll have a 500 team or an 81 win team. But what's really interesting in that spreadsheet is you can see how much you have to move each, either the denominator or the numerator to get to 80 wins or 82 wins. And that tells you how many runs equals a win. The shorthand has always sort of been 10 runs. It's not that anymore because we're not in as high as scoring environment as we were at 20 and even 10, 15 years ago. So right now it's 9.5 runs equals a win. And that will be important when we talk about things later, like runs created, and I would also add, I am all for getting rid of a team in Denver. Because even though there were 81 games out of 2430 played in Denver last year, that 9.5 equals a win would be 9.4 if you excluded those 81 wins. So really for most teams, 9.4 runs equals a win. The other thing that I talk about and I sort of, again, I do it for the interest of getting

20:21through it. When I do my season wins, I talk about sequencing. Sequencing, the example I always give is seven events. Let's say there's a home run, three walks, three strikeouts depending on the order. If you hit the home run first, then you get the three walks and three strikeouts. You get one run. If it's reverse three walks, one home run, then the three strikeouts, you get four runs. There's a fortune and an unfortunate outcome, both offensively and defensively for all that. But I use the catch all of sequencing. But there's all kinds of terms for this, one of which is cluster luck, which I believe you coined if I'm not mistaken back in the day. There's third order wins. There's base runs. There is subtle differences between these. What are those? Yeah, those are, again, this is great. So first, the Pythag tells you what your record would be expected based on your run scored and runs aloud. Looking at sequence actually tells you, though, what would be your expected run scored and runs aloud. Again, a better look at true talent. So yeah, third order wins is something that's been out there for a while and attempts to quantify this.

21:21Cluster looks a little different, though, Gil, and this one I first wrote about this. I didn't really want to pull back the curtain as much, but it is different. And essentially what it says is, any value of base runs that go into these calculations assumes league average. And what I always like to say is, yeah, that's great, but it doesn't tell you how it coordinates with the other guys on the team, just like Sierra does for pitching. In other words, Peter Lanzo was a great example for this. Like I always say, Peter Lanzo's war is actually understated. Not because it's war is wrong. It's not. It's comparing everybody in a vacuum. But any time Peter Lanzo and everybody's offense assumes league average production around him. Well, here's a great example. If Peter Lanzo batted third on a team with two average players above him, he wouldn't be expected to come to the plate with nobody on base about 50% of the time in the first

22:22inning. All right. Two outs, nobody on. We met with Lindor and Juan Soto in front of him. He would be expected to come to the plate with no runners on in the first inning and two outs, only 40% of the time. That is a massive difference, which tells you that Peter Lanzo's hits, home runs, etc., are actually worth more in the environment he plays in. That's what cluster luck captures. Sometimes it's exactly the same as third order wins. Other times it reveals, oh, man. Another sequencing is even more revealing than we thought it was when we looked at this team. So that's why that's why it's another building block. And you will track cluster luck for us all season long, I'm imagining, yes? Absolutely. And yes, yes, it is key to my handicap. And Peter Lanzo with the Orioles, I guess we don't know yet, is the bottom line there. That's right. Well, he's certainly not going to have the two guys in front of him, the same two guys that get on as much as Lindor and Soto did.

23:22Going back more with Joe. Next. Back on a numbers game, live from Circle Resort, Casino, downtown Las Vegas, Gil Alexander, Kelly Bidlin, Joe Pita, kind enough to join us for a second segment. And again, this is a three part series. And the next couple of times Joe is on, I'll do a case in Monday, Thursday and Monday. Part two will be Thursday, case study on the Mets specifically. And we'll get into season wind tunnel. So this will all crescendo into a bunch of plays, but we wanted to get the building blocks in here. So people have an understanding of some of the things Joe is talking about. And Joe joins us once again from San Francisco at Magic Rat SF in between Pine and California. Kelly, we won't say the cross, but Pine and California, the cross, let's talk about a stat that you have come to love runs created. Yeah. You know, like when you go back and retraining bases, it seems so primitive now when I talk

24:25about using war like contribution, like, hey, they added a two war guy and subtracted a one more guy that we're at the win. Yeah, runs created. I really love again, because I can put a number on it at a granular level. If you look at all the runs scored in Major League Baseball last year, Gil, and take all the played appearances that occurred, you realize that each played appearance on average creates 0.11 run, right? So we can start to, you know, then we can really tell, like, and that's how the run created plus number, the weighted run created plus number comes. If you see somebody with 125, they actually created 25 more runs than somebody else, and then you can multiply that by their played appearances and, you know, times it by 0.11, and you figure out actually how many runs they created. That is a great start for figuring out marginal changes to a team, right? In terms of these are the runs created that they have lost on offense. Can the guys bringing in create that?

25:26And on the other hand, look at maybe the dead wood a team got rid of. And the pirates are a great example of that. The pirates jettisoned like 2,000 played appearances last year by guys that had a, you know, that created 30 to 32% less runs than an average hitter. That really sets them up. You know, they all they have to do with that. Some average hitters and you could see a huge leap in their offensive production. Other teams like the Phillies, you realize, oh, they're, and the Tigers, they're simply running it back on offense. They, so where is the, so for them to have marginal improvement, you need somebody to break out. And I, you know, I leave it up to you. I do either of those routes, rosters have potential breakouts. So again, the runs created is a great way to look at the individual contribution of each player, then figure out, you know, marginally, if they've left the team or in the case of like George Springer, could he possibly repeat that at age 36, what he did last year?

26:28Right. Yeah, that answer is no way. And so then you look at the blue jays through that eye. And this is, this comes up at, we, we talk about this through other sports. I think famously in football, I said, when Case Keenum, everyone, when the Viking signed Kirk Cousins, I remember everybody was so thrilled. And I remember using these principles by saying to people, well, he's replacing Case Keenum's unbelievable production from this one year. So you have to make a different assessment. And I think the other interesting thing you say also is projections on this basis are wrong based on the majority of time based on playing time, not misevaluation of the player. That's exactly right. I went back and looked at prior year, like runs created projections, and instead of turning it into a rates that turning into the actual runs projected. And yes, when teams miss, it is usually because of playing time projections being wrong. There we go, or rather because of injuries. Every once in a while though, you do see collapses, sometimes combined with injuries and

27:29you really see a team blow up, the braves kind of meet that last year. The Indians had a complete collapse from their outfield projections last year. Still made the playoffs, but that's why they run scored were so bad. But that's right. You're really looking for the marginal change when you're bringing in a new guy versus what he replaces. All right. Feeling independent pitching pardon me, FIP versus ERA. I think most people who have had their nose and fan graphs for many, many years have watched this show and watch other shows. Most people know FIP better than ERA at this point or at least more of a reflection of a pitcher's true skill set. What are we missing in that equation? Yeah. So that's right. So what it essentially is is earned run averages. Of course, the actual runs allowed I actually and I always use runs allowed instead of ERA. But so it's actual runs allowed versus FIP says what should have he allowed given his skills that he's exhibiting and then they also hold constant the home run to fly ball rate. Whereas XFIP then gets rid of that too and comes up with a more expected home run rate.

28:36So the what we're missing there, Gil, and of course, the thing is, oh, he should, should have had an ERA of 4.3 and it's only 3.3. Therefore, he must be a go against pitcher going forward. That could be true. But it's important to note that you need to know how much defense if a team, if a pitcher has an above average defense, right, then he's going to have a better ERA than his FIP by definition, because FIP is assuming normal average defense. And what I have found is that when you look back at a season, defense will explain, last year, defense explains 51 and a half percent of the difference between league FIP at the team level and actual ERA. So the other 50, so what you would say is that 50 percent does not regress. If you've got a good defense behind you, and the Cubs are a great example. The Cubs had the best defense in baseball last year in terms of converting battered balls

29:38into outs. They also ranked high, if not the highest in all of the stat cast evaluations too. And in the Cubs case, their difference between FIP and ERA, 79 percent of that was explained by defense. So if you were betting against those Cubs pictures to regress, it wasn't going to happen unless their defense regressed. So again, it's just helpful in saying that, hey, it's not automatically a bet on or bet against based on the difference in FIP and ERA. You got to know about defense. Stat cast has really changed the game when it comes to defense. Do you buy all of it? Well, you can't argue with it, right, because the logic is foolproof. And there's nobody to argue with, right, it's a machine and the measurements of all the measurements. Look, it's the insights are great, but I still come up with some anomalies. And I'll tell you why, because when I handicap, I handicap my defense by units. Much as like Aaron Schatz does, it looks at offensive lines, not necessarily the individual

30:43players, but how does the unit work together? So there does come up with some anomalies. And there's two this year that I can't explain. And I'm not saying, I can't be right at my extreme. But the Stat cast has the Cardinals in field as outstanding and Mason win as the best short stop and baseball. He won the gold glove last year. Do I actually had him rate it as a worst short stop in baseball last year? Now I can't be right at that extreme. But let me give you what I see. The Cardinals had the, if not the lowest, one of the lowest strikeout staffs in the league. So you're going to have a lot of balls in play. They also had the highest, if one of the highest, if not the highest, ground ball staff in the league. So they're going to have more ground balls by far than any other team based on those two factors. They had an average amount of right handers versus left handers, which really shouldn't matter for short stops and second baseman. That's not really a factor. So when you look at that and you look at it lacquer, and you normalize it across all

31:46the teams, the Cardinals in field did not turn battered balls into out, including double plays at a rate you would expect. In fact, there was a huge deficit and the deficit all points to shortstop. Now and I even looked at, well, was no one on Arnando coming from over from third base and taking a lot of those balls, you know, I'm all Mike Schmidt and cutting off the shortstop and it's not true. It wasn't. So I can't reconcile that. And I guess I don't have to, but what I will say is, which is more indicative of what the defense is going to be like this year, doing it on a player by player basis or doing it as a team basis. I don't like that St. Louis defense. And my correlation from year to year doing this is over 50%. So I'm happy thinking the Cardinals are an outlier. And I know I'm going to have them lower rated in terms of runs allowed this year than the market will to start. We'll see which way it goes. But and the other, the opposite case is Riley Green in left field is Detroit.

32:49I had him as one of the best left fielders in, you know, in terms of turning battered balls into out. Stackcast would therefore say, well, they were all easy fly balls. And I'm like, by 30 more than anybody else, you know, they didn't have more left handed batters. They didn't have a fly ball staff. Let me just get some interesting anomalies. This is just for those who are listening for the first time. This is if you really want, if you're really doing baseball right, this is the kind of stuff you have to know. I know it's a super geek alert for everybody, but this is the sort of deep dive that we do on baseball. That's awesome. You're kidding me. This is great stuff. Thank you. Everybody should get. Let me throw in one more thing because it's under defense as well as that texture framing. There's two really interesting things this year. The Kenzie Gore is moving from the worst framing team in baseball and the worst framing capture to an above average one. And that will never be caught in the true skill set because, you know, ground ball rate, strikeout, right fly ball rate is actual. It doesn't adjust for what the capture should have gotten you.

33:52And then the other one is Justin Furlander is leaving the best frame or in baseball Patrick Bailey by a lot. Yes. And, you know, it's a very small sample set, but any other picture that's done that over the last five or 10 years has blown up the next year. So two things to watch for at the individual player level. It is why I bet Mackenzie Gore, big reason why I bet a male Saiyong 40 to one. And yes, Patrick Bailey is a nightly tour to force and framing for the Giants Joe to be continued Thursday. Thank you. A number's game on fee said these sports betting network back of the numbers game, live from circle resort, you see no downtown Las Vegas, kill Alexander Kelly, let me start with a bad news. Lost both the tennis matches, both Sitzapas and then my, my check was up set. He gags it to Alexei Popper and so it oh and two this morning, um, after a stellar

34:56day yesterday, where we went basically for units on those two, on those two matches. How far? Maybe the women are just being nicer than the men are to me right now. That's just one. I'd be like, I feel like that's, I feel like that's something I, I've brought up that you've disagreed with. I have. And here it is and living. Yeah. Yeah. Those are two disappointing matches. I'll take one sample size though. Coming off the Joe Pita segments. I will tell you what is not to support is Joe Pita amazing, um, Drew Bridges, Drew from Boise. Thank you all so much for this segment. More please. DP, love Joe P's stuff. Hope he can get a weekly time slot through the MLB season. I love that. But he's a busy man. Yeah. So I don't know we can do that. But we will try to get him on as often as possible, um, I don't know Joe for all kinds of reasons, but maybe my favorite, I say this one all the time, baseball Joe might be my favorite iteration. I love it. I love it. As we always talk about baseball, it's not something and you're not doing it either. Neither one of us is betting it like on a daily basis, but it's still so fat.

35:57It is. Maybe you guys set it off air favorite sport to handicap. It's still be on fascinating for me to just listen, especially whenever Joe comes, he brings it, right? He always brings it with the good stuff. And I was telling you this off air, I want to say it on air. This was always like what we just did for 20 minutes was always something that I, I thought set a numbers game apart on visa when it first started. And for someone like me, who was more of a, okay, mid, but experience level, experience level better. It was, it was an opportunity in a show that I could learn a lot from. And it was something that always led me to wanting to work with you when I got here. But just the amazing guest and Joe Pita is a great example of that. Joe is, is might, might be the greatest example. Yeah. He's, uh, so it's super awesome. And they get, he'll return on Thursday, we'll do a Mets, uh, New York metropolitan sort of, uh, case study. And then we'll do, he'll do all his favorite season win totals, bets. We will pepper him with a speed round, uh, for those that he didn't bet and what it, what his, uh, brief thoughts are on that, uh, chance, copper pot.

36:59Welcome back. Thanks for the, uh, docky series recommendation again. I can't turn away from the garbage fire. That is America's next top model, entire banks, yikes, and everything is a cycle. I'm too set. I'm two episodes in. I'm a little scared to start it because of that too. Again, my review from yesterday, Tyra Banks, maybe the most horrible human in the, uh, I was, I was telling you off air earlier the, the, the, have done something really weird the past two nights. They're just, there hasn't been games on late that I was that interested in. And then I couldn't find something to like land on to actually capture my attention. So I went to bed early last night. I did consider firing that up, but I was scared of that reaction. I was like, what if I get like an episode in and I can't turn it off? Like I can't be up to like midnight watching this show. Again, for those, uh, Ben writes, Stephen N. Wright, baseball nerds are cool. Yes, they are. Uh, I'll say it again from yesterday. I used to it. Clear channel San Francisco. I organized a part of organizing a massive America's next top model bedding pool. That's why we're so into it back in the day.

38:00And no other show expressed the difference in 20 years of our sort of evolution of, oh my God, how did we think all this was normal? And that show just horrifying to look back on it. And if you watch this documentary, the incredible part is everybody gets that who has aged 20 years, except for one human being. I'll let you guess who that is. Do you have any Jersey Shore documentaries out here? Oh, I don't come eventually guys. Those are going to be some good one punch. One punch. Awesome. Uh, the greatest Jim Danny laundry pop. Paulie still around here somewhere. I did. Yeah. Yeah. Paulie from from cars. He sure. Right. Oh, is he. He used to the hard rock when I was on the pool over there. And by the way, the other thing for the yesterday show, I still have not found the love is blind bet on calcium that I like. Because I think they have it. I think the markets have it right. Like who's going to get married and who's not, but man, what a dumpster fire that show is.

39:00Cannot wait for tomorrow's episode. Love is blind. Betable. Um, really? Got to interrupt this with more sports Ravens GM Eric DeCosta says he's confident that he and Lamar Jackson will be able to reach an agreement on an extension. Lamar represents himself as we know. And he into cost. I've had several talks lately. Lamar is 2026 cap number 73 and a half millie. Oh, I gotta do something about that. Danny's learning the power he has with that preview screen. Yeah. He's a squirrel. No, I Pavlov dog trained you over the over the years of whatever I put in the preview screen. I'm really need to read. I'm just like. Yeah. And it's getting me too. We got more. My Garafalo Browns GM Andrew Barry asked what he wants to see from Shadour Sanders quote continued growth. What? He learned a lot from start one to start seven wants him to keep the ball out of harm's way while also being explosive and continue to work on his body physically. Also waters wet. You know what? I'm allowed. We're allowed. I'm allowed to laugh at the Browns win total, Gil.

40:00Because you know what I wasn't doing last summer was just destroying this kid. Why are we not giving him any credit at this point? Like he did make like he's going to start for the Browns is here. Everybody was laughing at Shadour Sanders even being in the NFL. Oh, yeah. I brought that up towards the end of the year. I was like, yeah, let's let's let's not let's not forget how much it's we said we said we. Yeah. I could still hate the roster now, but it's just incredible how he seamlessly went from that attitude about Shadour to now he's like, oh, he's going to be starting for the Browns most likely. Yeah. No one said he's making the hall of fame. We're just saying he's starting. 32 jobs are truly tough to get for now. He's starting for now. Yeah. Again, sorry about the tennis this morning. Two of Tyler's for now. I hear is the brain dead money line techathon our first brain dead money line Parley in the national basketball association tank of on 2026 and again, tank of on 2018, which back in the day, I cannot stress this enough Kelly. I know it gets boring to hear this, but I'll say one more time, which is everyone thought we were crazy at first doing this.

41:03But now everybody knows it's a thing. And now the league is just obsessed with combating this Mark Cuban while I was gone, says leak should embrace this. Oh, I don't even get me started with a couple of these owners. Did you catch it? Yes. No. What did that. Oh, my God. What did he say? Ispia. This is like phoenix. It's like last week. First of all, he took over ownership power. What two years ago. I think we're two or three years into this. Daniel Snydering that franchise tweeting long. That's a long ass tweet. He's very anti-tanking, too, and he's going to let you know about it, Gil. And I first got brought, I saw this in an article and it was the, it was, it was a quote from the tweet about how ispia was like, you can't even compare this to prop bedding. I had to go see the tweet because I'm like, wait, what exactly? I'm like, to the prop bedding scandal, you cannot compare tanking to the prop bedding scandal in the NBA. He thinks the tanking is far worse. Okay. I'm reading this in an ESPN article and I'm like, mad ispia did not just say this with

42:03like out without being questioned, right? That tanking is worse than the players than the player prop bedding scandal of stop it. I don't even care. I'm like, the biggest thing to me, I was like, he didn't just openly say this, right? Like someone had to ask him this question directly, right? Like there's got to be people in the son's PR department that are losing their mind. Nope. I just pull up a tweet where just mad ispia had figured he'd just throw it out there that it's worth comparing tanking to a player prop bedding scandals, just what the league wants. You know, bring it up the the brain dead parlay by the way tonight. Sorry. I didn't even finish ispia though, very easy for some of these guys when you don't control a draft pick for like multiple years for you to be like, yes, it's the right thing to do. Shut it down. You'd be like King tank. If you were. Exactly. The the brain dead and NBA parlay sixers hawks hornets wins you about 78 cents on the dollar. Yeah. I fully endorse it. Sixers playing the Pacers hawks playing the wizards hornets playing the bulls you sir. I laid seven and a half with the hornets laid five and a half with the wolves also tied

43:07them into a money line parlay with the 76ers as I kind of demonstrated earlier that was the quick jump yesterday as I saw the see how come news come down and saw that price come down as go bet and I would completely endorse. I think you can replace one of these legs, uh, Timberwolves with the hawks if you wanted to, but I like the wolves tonight and conca nipple rookie the year plus three 25 added last night. If I'm sitting here and run my mouth for a bit more, I should add another bet to it. So yeah, conca nipple don't know what's going on in Dallas. Hmm. Don't really know why more people aren't talking about it either. Jimmy root has a three college basketball plays for tonight Troy Trojan's minus 11 versus Louisiana San Jose State Spartans lay in seven at Air Force and USC. Those Trojans catching seven and a half at their rival UCLA three from Jim root from three man week. Danny, help confirm this for me if you can, but, uh, I'm pretty sure Matt Cox last time last two times he came on also went against Air Force, the, that is correct. He said, the three man weavers have it in for Air Force on him.

44:10It could not have three man weave on American love, but that I think Matt Cox had to clear that up multiple times actually drew dents. It was in here earlier. He's on the calves tonight laying the four versus the nicks. He's got the cabs is third highest rated NBA team and he is on the T walls laying the five and a half against the blazers as well in the association tonight. Anybody else on the show with, uh, with, uh, with picks, I believe that is it. That is it. That is all. Let's see recap sales wanted to make a comment about the Rangers and the catching comment that does is their catching coordinator has left the team and may change some of the gore love. Okay. The catching coordinate catch a coordinate, but the point remains about framing and how that is something that the average baseball handicapper let alone mainstream media does not catch. No pun intended does not grab onto on a daily basis and is hard to actually pinpoint inside the numbers. So there's that as well. Prop points next.

45:10Jeff Erickson, Nick Whalen, enjoy from Visa. They sports betting network.