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USATSI

Hello, everybody, I am back! That's right, it's me, Tom Fornelli, returning to you from my vacation and champing at the bit to share my favorite bets with you. I've missed you all so much.

But I also come bearing some sad news. You see, it's time we retire the NL Least Principle that brought us so much joy and money during the regular season. For the uninitiated, the NL Least Principle was simple: the NL East is the worst division in baseball, and nobody in it is good, therefore, nobody in the NL East ever deserved to be favored against another NL East team.

So we would just bet the underdog in every NL East divisional game.

It was a great principle for the first four months of the season, going 54-62 overall with a return of roughly eight units. Unfortunately, with the passing of MLB's trade deadline, teams had to choose whether they want to go for it or move on. The Nationals and Marlins both opted to move on and are now playing for the future, making them less viable as underdogs.

This is why it's no surprise that the NL Least Principle has gone 5-14 and lost nearly 6.5 units since the trade deadline passed. So the time has come to retire this wonderful principle and thank it for all it did for us. Hopefully, it'll have a revival next year.

Now I get to do something I haven't done in too long: place some bets.

All times Eastern, and all odds via Caesars Sportsbook

🔥 The Hot Ticket

Angels at Yankees, 7:05 p.m. | TV: MLB Network
The Pick: Yankees -1.5 (-135): I don't think the market has fully caught up to the Yankees. They made crucial additions to their lineup at the trade deadline, but even though they've been battered by injuries and COVID, they're a better team right now than they were at this time a month ago. They also get Gerrit Cole back tonight, and he's returning to a team that has won 12 of its last 16 and took two of three from the first-place White Sox over the weekend.

The problem is that the money line price doesn't offer us much value, but I do see some on this spread. In 14 games this month, the Yankees offense averages 5.5 runs per game, and eight of the team's 10 wins have come by at least two runs. Their average margin of victory has been 3.4 runs in that span. Tonight they're facing an Angels team that features a lot of incredible highlights from Shohei Ohtani and very little else.

The Angels enter tonight's game hitting a paltry .222/.292/.327 as a team in August, averaging only 3.4 runs per game. I don't like their chances of breaking out of a slump against a very rested Gerrit Cole.

Key Trend: The Yankees' last 10 wins have come by an average of 3.4 runs per game.

Here's what SportsLine is saying about the game: The Advanced Computer Model doesn't have any strong feelings about anything in this game, but that shouldn't surprise us because computers weren't built to feel.

💰 The Picks

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⚾ MLB

Athletics at White Sox, 8:10 p.m. | TV: ESPN
The Pick: Under 9.5 (-133) -- Guaranteed Rate Field is typically viewed as a hitter's park, and for good reason. When it warms up in Chicago, balls fly through the air on the south side of the city, but that's typically not the case for evening games like this one. Especially when temperatures are settling in the lower 70s and the wind is blowing in.

It doesn't hurt my confidence that Dallas Keuchel is starting for the White Sox tonight. While he's a soft-tossing lefty who doesn't get strikeouts, he does a great job of getting ground balls. Oakland starter Frankie Montas is about league-average in that department, but he's better than average at limiting hard contact and home runs. Both are backed by excellent bullpens, so there's value to be had on this total. I'm taking the alternate line of 9.5, but I'm fine with the under 9 too.

Key Trend: The under is 5-2 in the last seven meetings.

Mets at Giants, 9:45 p.m. | TV: MLB.TV
The Pick: Giants -1.5 (-110) -- Are the Mets irretrievably broken? I'm starting to think so. I'm also starting to think that the strategy of winning 75% of Jacob deGrom's starts and hoping to win half the games he doesn't is a lot more effective when deGrom isn't on the injured list. Anyway, regardless of deGrom, it's the Mets' offense that's been absent for a while.

New York enters tonight hitting .216/.295/.338 as a team in August while averaging 3.4 runs per game. The struggles are only more pronounced because the Mets' pitching staff has an ERA of 5.03 this month as opponents are hitting .254/.323/.476 against them.

The Giants are a legitimate contender in one of the toughest divisions in baseball. The Mets have lost 10 of 14, with three of their wins coming against a Washington team in a full-on rebuild. These are two ships passing in the night, but the Mets are headed right toward an iceberg.

Key Trend: The Mets last 10 losses have come by an average of 3.1 runs per game.

🔒 SportsLine Pick of the Day: SportsLine's Matt Severance is our hottest MLB handicapper right now, returning 28.09 units to betters over his last 293 picks. Tonight he has a strong play on the spread between the Minnesota Twins and Cleveland Indians.

 ⚽ Serie A Future

The Serie A season begins this weekend with every match being available on Paramount+, which is awesome because Serie A is one of the most entertaining soccer leagues in the world. So this week, I'm going to include Serie A futures for us to bet before the season begins. We'll start the week with the defending champions.

The Pick: Inter Milan to win Serie A (+400): Inter won the league last season, turning what had looked to be a close race last January into a comfortable 12-point lead over rival AC Milan to finish the season. Then everything went wrong. Christian Eriksen, one of the key players in the team's midfield, suffered a heart attack during a match at the Euros, and it's unclear whether or not he'll ever play for Inter again. Key players had to be sold to help Inter deal with massive debt that accumulated further because of COVID-19. That includes last year's leading goal scorer in the league, Romelu Lukaku, being sold to Chelsea.

Oh, and Antonio Conte, the manager that led the team to a title, left as well.

All of which has led to Inter being written off before the season begins, but I think that's a bit foolish. Serie A should once again have one of the most exciting title races in Europe this season, with as many as seven teams that could realistically win the league. Inter is undoubtedly one of those teams, and this price is too large of a market correction to a bad offseason.