Saturday Best Bet Results
After mostly trading money the past week, Saturday was a great day in the Tuley’s Takes home office that has been temporarily moved to Hawaii (not that we were complaining).
We won our Best Bet on the Heat +3 vs. the Celtics in a thrilling 104-103 loss. It didn’t start out looking so good with the Heat trailing by 10 in the fourth quarter, but they rallied to nearly pull off the outright upset on JImmy Butler’s 3 free throws with 3.0 second to play, only to lose straight-up on Derrick White’s historic, buzzer-beating tip-in of Marcus Smart’s missed 3-pointer.
The spread-covering win was especially sweet as it made a loser of all those people that have been saying “the points don’t matter in the NBA playoffs because the winning team always covers the spread.” We also cashed on a contrarian play as everyone was seeming to jump on the Boston bandwagon (though money-line bettors on the Celtics cashed with ultimately a right-side winner as well).
Top MLB Resources:
This also sets up a rare situation where we cashed on the Heat as a “zig-zag” play (aka “loser of the last”), but since they lost straight-up, we can bet them again in the zig-zag role in Monday’s Game 7, which we’re doing with the line back up at +8.
We also made a tidy profit with our MLB dog plays on Saturday. We took two big First 5 Inning dogs (Pirates F5 +170 at Mariners and Marlins F5 +155 at Angels) and lost with the Pirates as they trailed 4-0 after 5 innings but hit with the Marlins as they squeaked out a 2-1 lead vs. Shohei Ohtani after 5 and went on to win 8-5 in 10 innings for those who bet my plays that way.
The 2-1 record and +145.91 profit improved our record in May to 36-25-7 (59%) – even more impressive when you consider that many of those wins have been underdogs – and the plus-money has pushed us back up over +13.5 units with a net profit of $1,354.64 based on $100 flat bets, according to the VSiN Pro Picks page.
Let’s look for more Best Bets on Sunday with 2 MLB play on a full 15-game card, plus we’ll add that Game 7 play on the Heat for Monday.
MLB Sunday Best Bets
Twins First 5 Innings +100 vs. Blue Jays: I don’t often fade the Blue Jays as I like their team overall, but I like the Twins in this spot with Bailey Ober (3-1, 2.55 ERA) as a short home underdog in the rubber game of a 3-game series after holding on for a 9-7 win in their game on Saturday. We’re also not afraid of fading Jose Berrios (4-4, 4.22 ERA).
Rangers First 5 +125 at Orioles: Similar to those value plays on the Pirates and Angels yesterday, we’ll take the inflated price of +125 even though we’re not getting the best of the pitching matchup here at first glance with Cody Bradford (0-1, 10.80 ERA) making just his second MLB start. We get the Rangers’ top-scoring offense (6.44 runs per game vs. just 5.08 for the Orioles) while the home/road splits for the two teams are even better with the Rangers averaging 6.12 runs per game on the road with the Orioles averaging lower at home at 4.25. We’ll count on that for the Rangers to grab the early lead against Kyle Bradish (2-1, 4.34 ERA).
NBA Monday Best Bet
Heat +8 at Celtics: Some book actually opened Monday’ Game 7 at Celtics -8.5, but as discussed above, we’re fading that again with the Heat in the zig-zag role to at least cover. We missed the +8.5 as most books were down to 8 by the end of the wagering on Saturday night (even later here in Hawaii), but we’ll lock in the +8 just in case. More on this game in Monday’s column.
