Yesterday's picks: how the model did (MLB, September 23)

Verdexed's graded line for Wednesday, September 23, is zero picks, zero correct, zero incorrect. Major League Baseball played a full board, the only league with a regular season slate in front of this desk, and not one game was scored here, because the model's per-game probabilities were not published. By this column's running count that is the forty-eighth consecutive slate opening with the same number. Wednesday's picks column claimed no edge and stated no side, so nothing that happened on the field belongs on the model's record, good or bad.

The scorecard

Picks made: zero. Correct: zero. Incorrect: zero. Accuracy on the day is undefined, because the denominator is zero.

No accuracy percentage and no Brier score is cited here. A public search returns the Verdexed methodology page, which describes logging every prediction before first pitch and scoring it on win accuracy and on Brier score, where lower is better. It does not return the ledger underneath it. A description of a process is not a number. The 65 percent and 70 percent confidence tiers went unpopulated for a forty-eighth straight day, so whether the high-confidence chalk held cannot be answered, because no confidence was published.

The hand-kept ledger of stated sides holds at 13-10 across 23 decisions, unchanged.

Wednesday was thinner than most. The picks column quoted no moneylines at all, only one directional market read, so even the borrowed scoreboard this page sometimes falls back on is a single line long. That line lost.

Best call / worst miss

Nothing was picked, so there is no sharpest call and no worst miss belonging to the model. What follows grades the column's own reporting and the one market read it committed to.

**The worst read: Philadelphia.** The column described the market as having the Phillies a modest home favorite against Milwaukee, with Aaron Nola listed against Logan Henderson. Nola gave up four runs across six innings and the Phillies had their wild card clinch put on hold. Result at Citizens Bank Park: **Brewers 4, Phillies 1**. The single directional read on the page was wrong, and with nothing else quoted there is nothing to offset it.

**The best judgment: naming Astros at Mariners the consequential game.** It was. Seattle trailed 5-4 after Isaac Paredes tripled home the automatic runner in the top of the tenth, then Julio Rodriguez drew a bases-loaded walk with two outs against Josh Hader and Josh Naylor dropped a soft single in to score Randy Arozarena. Result at T-Mobile Park: **Mariners 6, Astros 5 in ten innings**. Dominic Canzone drove in three for Seattle, Yainer Diaz hit a two-run homer for Houston, and Cooper Criswell took the win. Houston, at 78-80, stayed level with Texas atop the American League West holding the head-to-head tiebreaker, and Seattle at 74-84 stayed alive only through a three-way tie scenario with four games left.

**A second piece of reporting that held up.** The column refused to name Cleveland's starter because two previews disagreed, listing Foster Griffin in one and Parker Messick in the other. Griffin got the ball. Result at Fenway Park: **Red Sox 1, Guardians 0**, Sonny Gray's eighteenth win, with a sixth-inning RBI single from Andruw Monasterio reported as the only run. In the other half of the American League Central race, **Royals 5, White Sox 4**, Maikel Garcia with three hits and three RBI including a tiebreaking double in the seventh. Both contenders lost, so the one-game margin at the top did not move, and Chicago is reported to hold the head-to-head tiebreaker. The records surfaced through search disagreed again on Chicago's win total, so none is asserted.

**The caveat that landed on this desk's own page.** The column warned that every starter it listed was projected rather than confirmed. Recaps of the Dodgers game name a different Los Angeles pitcher than the column projected, and than Tuesday's edition of this page had starting Tuesday. Those cannot both be right, so no starter is asserted here. The final is confirmed: **Padres 5, Dodgers 1**, Manny Machado homering and driving in three, snapping a Los Angeles home winning streak reported at 11 games and putting San Diego alone atop the National League wild card.

What it means

A one-line market read going 0-1 is not a result. The result is the zero, and it is the forty-eighth of its kind. Reporting a good day because the games the column previewed produced clean, confirmable finals would be the exact dishonesty this page exists to avoid. Confirming a score is research. Grading a pick requires a pick.

The durable read has not moved in nearly two months. The ledger this column keeps has been frozen since late July, and a hand-kept 13-10 across 23 stated sides is the only graded figure on this page. At that sample the distance between 13-10 and 10-13 is a few coin flips, which is a reason to hold it loosely rather than lean on it. Forty-eight consecutive slates without a graded pick is a publishing failure rather than a modeling result, and the MLB regular season has four days left. The window to grade a 2026 baseball board in public is closing. Wednesday's NHL games were preseason and are not a graded surface here.

Responsible play

**This is a record of past model output, not betting advice.** Verdexed grades its model in public for transparency and entertainment. Past results do not predict future outcomes, nothing here is a recommendation to place a wager, and no pick is ever a guarantee, even a strong model loses regularly.

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