The Washington Nationals do not have, never had, and never will have any value. You people are complete squares that are betting on them.When, in fact, I said:
I'll still stand by that statement. This whole post came about because some anonymous dick failed at making a joke about the Nationals. I was reasonably sure when I did the analysis I would find that Washington juice was greater than their third order winning percentage. When it didn't come in that way, I needed some way to explain it. Of course, why let the scientific method get in the way of good snark.
I'm not entirely sure what this means, other than I have likely been betting on Washington (n=34)... too much, when they don't actually have value.
There is zero doubt the analysis was flawed. I thought it was going to be a quick and dirty analysis that showed up "anonymous." A lot of the data points were not valid because of sample size considerations. But that's not what I'm getting hammered on. It's Washington. And I'm being misquoted at that.
When, as contrarians, have we ever bet on a team in 77% of their games? Are we to think that the books are shading their lines every single day against whichever team the Nationals are playing? I find that unlikely. And because of that, I came to the conclusion that betting on the Nats every single day is likely -EV.
Obviously, with a team as terrible/underrated as Washington, there are going to be days where they have value. I've never made a statement otherwise. I came closest in the comments here:
Well, yeah, except that Matchbook gamblers have them pegged as a .430 team in the 35 games I've wagered (with no trend to the juice) and PCT3 had them pegged as a .430 team through 49 games (when pitching matchups and HFA are smoothed out over the sample). Is PCT3 not the expected number of wins and losses given their base runs and SoS? If expected winning percentage = odds received, how is that not a sign of no value? What am I missing here?But once again, this is making the point that betting on the Nats every single day is not +EV (assuming you substitute PCT2 for PCT3) or that if it is (as Vegas points out later in the thread), it's not terribly +EV. It's better to pick your spots.
And this all gets back to why I stopped playing Washington. I readily admit that baseball is not my strongest sport. I'm having a difficult time deciding when Washington does and does not have value, since their lines always seem so off because their real winning percentage right now is around 27%. If I feel like I've proven to myself that betting on Washington every single day is not a good bet, and if I feel like I can't pick the good bets from the bad, then doesn't it make sense to completely pass them totally?
Or we could just say that Washington has no value at all. Either one.
