On The Mound

A rare early start time today for several MLB games starting with the Florida Marlins and the Los Angeles Dodgers at 5:10pm, but I suspect more attention will be paid to the Champions' League game starting a little later tonight. Personally, I suspect value will be easier to find in the baseball than in the football, where the trading volume will be exponentially higher.

April baseball can be a bit tricky with form not yet established, but that information can work in your favour if you apply it correctly. Peter Nordsted's MLB Daily Picks have had a good run of late, (see Gold All Over), although slightly down from when I started following them, but early days yet. I wish I still had my baseball records from 10 years ago, but from memory there was value opposing the favourite unless they were at ~1.5 or less, a similar observation to that off the football leagues where 1.3 or less, sees value in backing the favourite.

I also updated my Strong Draw picks which since the start of 2011, have a not-too-shabby ROI of 26.37%. The strike rate is 17 from 49, with the average draw price at 3.4. As with all these systems, the winners don't come along in a steady W, L, L, W, L, L sequence though, leading to spells of discomfort, exacerbated by the infrequency of selections. One winner between 27 February and 3 April sounds pretty awful, but when you can maintain perspective, it's not so bad. When the strike rate is about 1 in 3, it's expected that long losing runs will be experienced. My longest is 8, included in a run of one winner from 11, but then, like the proverbial London buses, two or three come along together. This past weekend I hit three of four, with only Bolton's 90' winner v Arsenal ruining a perfect weekend.

With April winding down, I find myself having to overcome a reluctance to trade too much. As I've mentioned before, April has been by Achilles Heel over the years, with a net loss since 2006, but learning from my lessons, this month is currently up so that if the month ended now, my Aprils total would be positive, albeit very slightly, but I hate the thought of looking at that spreadsheet for another year with a month of red. The rational thing to do is to to keep finding value and continue as normal, but there is this nagging voice in my head that says to take the rest of the month off! An example of how discipline works both ways.