My MLB Picks Experiment
Alright, so I got curious. You see all these folks online screaming about their “guaranteed” MLB picks. Some are free, some you gotta pay for. Like, cold hard cash. Kept wondering: are those paid ones actually worth it, or is it just a fancy way to take your money? Felt like I needed to test it myself.
Started small. Real small. Found three places giving out free MLB picks. You know the deal – sign up for some email list, follow some social media account, basic stuff. Grabbed their picks for a whole week. Didn’t skip a day.
At the same time, dug a little deeper. Found two different sites selling picks, like $20-$50 for a week of their “premium” selections. Felt kinda stupid spending money on this, but hey, it’s an experiment. Pulled out the credit card, muttered something to myself about “research,” and bought into both of their weekly packages. Set them up right next to the free ones.
Now, my plan was simple, but tracking it was kinda messy. Made a big ol’ spreadsheet – gotta love spreadsheets. Columns for: The game date. The teams playing. The free pick source (#1, #2, #3). What their pick actually was (like, Yankees moneyline, or Dodgers runline -1.5). Then did the same exact thing for Paid Service A and Paid Service B. Added the real game result and the money line odds where I could find ’em easily.
Every single day that week, I’d check:
- What did Free Pick #1 say today?
- What did Free Pick #2 say?
- What did Free Pick #3 say?
- What’s Paid Service A pushing today?
- What did Paid Service B pick tonight?
Jotted them all down on the sheet. Then, the next morning, like clockwork, I’d check the scores. Did the pick win? Lose? Push? Then updated the sheet. Pain in the butt, but necessary.
By the end of the week, that spreadsheet looked like a battlefield. Some wins, some losses, some pushes. Then came the math part. Fired up the calculator and started crunching numbers for each set of picks. Here’s the basic gist:
- For the Free Picks: How many did they get right out of how many total? Calculated that winning percentage for each source.
- For the Paid Picks: Same thing. Right picks vs. total picks. Winning percentage.
- Then, thought “Okay, what if I actually bet money?” Not like I bet for real, but pretended. So I looked up typical odds (+110 or whatever) for the picks that won. If I hypothetically bet $100 each time a source gave a pick, how much would I be up or down for that source, based purely on their win percentage and odds?
Honestly? The results were… underwhelming. And kinda frustrating.
One of the free services actually did okay! Like, around 55% winners that week. Another free one? Just below 50%, which means you’d lose money betting flat. The third? Basically flipping a coin.
The paid ones? This really stung. Paid Service A? Barely scraped 52%. Paid Service B? Smack on 50%. When I did the pretend betting math, both paid services left you down money compared to where you started. One free service actually showed a small pretend profit!
Now, I know, one week ain’t the whole story. Maybe those paid guys had a bad week. Maybe the free ones got lucky. But spending $70 total for picks that performed worse or no better than something I could get for just my email address? Felt pretty rough.
My gut feeling now? Most of these pick sellers, paid ones especially, are just making noise. They gotta keep selling subscriptions, right? The free ones seem more like folks just sharing opinions – sometimes useful, sometimes terrible. The math from my little experiment just didn’t show any magic behind the paywall. Still broke, but at least I learned something.