Yesterday's picks: how the model did (August 3)

Monday finished ahead. The column published reads on the August 3 board, five of which carried a stated direction, and those five went 3-2. The widest disagreement with the market cashed in Houston, on the underdog. The firmest price of the night lost by six runs at Yankee Stadium.

The scorecard

Five stated directions, three correct.

The first hit was the day's headline gap. Blue Jays at Astros was published as the widest projection-to-price disagreement on the slate, with Houston favored near -135, Toronto around +112 and a public projection giving the Blue Jays about 56 percent, a spread of roughly eleven percentage points. Toronto won 3-1. Alejandro Kirk led off the second with a home run and Shane Bieber allowed one run over 5 2/3 innings. Houston left 13 men on base, failed to record an extra-base hit, and had its six-game winning streak ended.

The second hit was Nationals at Phillies, where Philadelphia was quoted near -156, about 60 percent before the margin comes out, on a qualitative read because no per-game projection was retrievable. Philadelphia won 6-3 and trailed 3-0 into the seventh to get there, when Derek Hill hit a go-ahead grand slam off Tom Cosgrove. The side cashed, but not comfortably.

The third hit came at Coors Field. Rays at Rockies was listed in the top confidence tier with Tampa Bay quoted from -155 to -163, and the published caveat was that altitude, not the side, was the risk. Both halves held. Tampa Bay won 13-9 behind two Junior Caminero home runs, and the clubs combined for 22 runs.

The first miss was Dodgers at Cubs, published as a firm side with price and projection in agreement, Los Angeles near -121 and the projection at 57 percent. Chicago won 10-5. Seiya Suzuki, Carson Kelly and Kevin Alcantara each hit a two-run homer, and Justin Wrobleski was charged with seven runs over 4 1/3 innings. It was the fourth straight defeat for Los Angeles.

The second miss was the top of the confidence tier. Cardinals at Yankees carried the firmest number on the board, New York near -196 with St. Louis around +164, roughly a 65 percent read on the Yankees. St. Louis won 13-7.

Giants at Rangers drew no stated lean and does not count on the card. San Francisco won 5-1 behind six shutout innings from Logan Webb.

A slate-wide accuracy percentage and Brier figure for Monday were not retrievable from Verdexed's public accuracy surface at the time of writing, so no number is quoted here, for a second straight morning.

Best call / worst miss

The best call was Toronto, and the honest version of it cuts against the column rather than for it. The published piece named the eleven-point gap and then argued against trusting it, calling an unconfirmed starting matchup on deadline day a reason to look closely rather than to lean. The model number was the part that was right, and the hedge printed above it was the part that missed. That is now twice in three days the editorial caution has been wrong about the widest gap on the board.

The worst miss was the Yankees, and the shape of it is worse than the line. New York was the firmest price of the night at -196, at home, against a St. Louis club that entered 55-57. Alec Burleson hit three two-run homers off three different pitchers: one off starter Cam Schlittler in the first, one off Tim Hill in the fourth for a 6-0 lead, and a 418-foot drive off Angel Chivilli that capped a seven-run eighth. The Yankees erased the entire six-run deficit in between and still lost by six.

One qualifier belongs in the record, and it does not soften anything. The column stated in advance that no independent projection was retrievable to test that price, making it a confident market side rather than a claimed model edge. A side published at the top of the confidence tier still lost, to a sub-.500 team, by six runs.

What it means

A 3-2 day is a fine day and a small one. Four graded cards now read 2-0, 1-1, 2-2 and 3-2 on stated sides, or 8-5. At thirteen decisions that carries essentially no information about the model in either direction.

Two threads are worth tracking past the noise. The first is Los Angeles. A Dodgers side has now been published and lost on three consecutive cards, twice against Boston over the weekend and again at Wrigley on Monday, while the club has dropped four straight. This desk flagged that yesterday as a possible stale input rather than a bad break, and Monday did not argue otherwise.

The second is the confidence tier, which split. Tampa Bay held at Coors, New York did not. Saturday through Monday the tier is 1-3 on graded entries. Three days is far too short to call that a calibration problem, but it is the sort of run that becomes one if it continues, and it will be reported here either way.

The missing accuracy figure is its own limitation. A record assembled from named games is a weaker instrument than the model's own scored output, and readers should weight this card accordingly.

Responsible play

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