Game Day: Thursday, July 9th
Anybody who reads my column should know a couple of things:
1. Most days, the first edition of the Game Day post hits the front page somewhere between 10 AM CDT and 5 PM CDT, depending on a few variables: how late I was up the night prior, how early I woke in the present day and I'd say thirdly, how pressed I am to get a pick in.
2. Game Day always precedes Today's Pick. Some days there is no pick but most days there is at the very least a Game Day post.
3. The First Edition will normally contain a good number of spelling and grammatical mistakes. I am working under what I would call "less than ideal" conditions. I do my best to get three posts out daily, a "Game Day", "Today's Pick" and a "Pick Result". The need to get my posts in before the games start often requires that I post now and edit later.
4. When I make a bet on a late game, the "Pick Result" is often posted the following morning. I don't like staying up all night. I find it best to get some sleep and check the results in the morning.
5. I continuously edit my posts after I post them, correcting spelling errors, typos, grammatical mistakes and readability issues. I never "change a pick" or "cook the books" -- I don't cheat myself. If I make an error in my record keeping, it is an honest mistake.
That's about it. I make my best effort to write the posts and play the bookies' game everyday during the MLB season. This is my third season of picks and the blogging has evolved and improved in many ways. I started on Twitter when it was still Twitter back in 2021. I spent some time in jail and didn't have internet from January of 2022 to the Fall of 2024. I resumed the blog here at:
http://www.MLBpickstreak.blogspot.com
in the spring of 2025. It's been going strong for nearly two seasons. I'm closing in on 500 posts and believe it or not, I get a little traffic to this Blogger blog. I'm averaging about 100 page views a day.
I am an expert internet marketer. Due to my current station, I haven't put one iota of effort into marketing or developing this blog. I built this blog on my phone. Blogger makes it fairly easy to start a blog from your mobile device and that is why I am on Blogger to this date. I do all my work from the field on my mobile.
It takes a significant effort to follow MLB daily and to write the posts daily. MLB moves fast. MLB moves slow. It is a long season that you need to follow closely from March to August. In August and September, if you put in a good effort, you can coast some on the research into the end of the regular season. The effort to write the posts is no easier and that is why it is so important. The challenge must remain until the season is in the books.
I was up late last night digging through stats tables and I'll be up tonight too, digging through stats tables. I dig through stats and read articles everyday during the regular season. I put in hours of effort everyday to write this blog as an expert. I have a degree in Finance. Many years of experience working in financial markets and technology. 10 seasons of fantasy baseball under my belt. I am a professional copywriter too.
I consider myself an expert MLB handicapper, not in the sense that I win consistently, but in the sense that I know every lineup, every roster, every player, and can read into the statistics in a way that I can decipher what players and teams are playing well and what trends yield an advantage and a disadvantage. I read the stats and draw my conclusions without the use of any third party services. I don't follow any gurus or any advice from any outside sources.
I'd like to develop a new site, migrate all my work from Blogger to a self-hosted domain. I was thinking I'd go with Jekyll or Hugo as my blogging software and I'll spin up a VM on the public cloud to host my domain and application and serve my web traffic. If I have some success, I could create a high-availability cluster of bare-metal servers. I could create my own network of edge servers too to serve my posts and articles to a global audience.
I'll install and configure a local dev environment on my local network and push updates to Github. My cloud server would pull updates from Github with a cron job. A real professional dev environment.
I'll migrate the content of my blog posts from Blogger to the new application and hosting environment. I'll customize the front-end design and layout of the blog for web and mobile. I'll setup an SSL certificate and launch.
I can do all that work too. It will be a really professional blog. I'll open social accounts across all the networks and join all the relevant forums. I'll drive a boat load of highly-targeted traffic to this blog.
As far as monetizing the blog goes, I'll fail. I might sell an ad or two to a reputable service like Ballpark Pal or Superfan Sports app. I might setup some affiliate accounts. I will likely incorporate some sort of "Buy Me a Coffee" like fundraising.
It's tough to make a buck on the internet if you aren't a schemer and a scheister or willing to entertain and promote the unsavory.
I read the analysis on the Superfan Sports app. They do the same thing I do in a sense: writing pregame reports, making picks and writing post game coverage within their app. I think they have an AI that does all of their writing and the reports read fairly well. It is very impressive in some regard. I do my best to differentiate myself as still having a human heart and some sort of human consciousness. I question whether or not it is being eradicated in the era of AI and augmented intelligence.
Superfan Sports is a great app that has a plethora of features that I use everyday. I use the app primarily for game schedules, pregame pitching matchups, live boxscores and play-by-play and historical boxscores and game results.
Superfan Sports has also developed algorithms (or they are white-labeling a third party service) to discover expected value mispricings and to identify betting opportunities. I don't use their picks or any other computer service's EV picks in my decision making process, not one iota. I do read them after I make my picks and they usually make similar points and have similar opinions to my own.
Every algo is and of itself an independent opinion. Algos can vary greatly in their design and their outcomes. I have many different designs in mind for algos, some are very straightforward and hard number crunchers, others are more abstract and circumstantial. I could develop these too. It would take a significanct amount of my time and would be a significant effort but I could do it if I had the resources. I have the know-how. The design of the algo and the systems optimization is the greatest challenge. Integrating the data feeds and ensuring they are computing accurately is tedious work but it's fairly basic Python programming.
I have an idea for a blog that pits myself as a handicapper who doesn't use algos or AI against an AI handicapper and a third competitor, a completely random and seemingly unintelligent participant, the Dartboard.
The Capper, the AI and the Dartboard. I think it would be an interesting read from day to day in this world of computer thought and the era of AI that we live in presently.
Grandiose ideas. Are they worth the effort?
If I had 10M in the bank would I still make this effort? That is to say, if money wasn't a motivating factor would I still have the motivation to do this work developing and managing the blog?
I think I would because I think people would enjoy the articles and the daily banter. I would enjoy the experiment, the daily comparisons and the outcomes over the course of the MLB season.
As long as I had a nice home and my expenses covered. As long as I still had time for gardening, landscaping, groceries, cooking and cleaning. As long as I still have time for exercise, some golf, rest and relaxation and some cold beer. I carry all of those responsibilities for myself. They are my joy and my peace. I don't want a maid, a wife, a handyman or a butler in my house.
That's it for Game Day today. Back later this afternoon with Today's Pick.