Back From Aestivation

After a slight setback last season, the strategy of blindly backing favourites in the first game after the All-Star Break returned a profit, which at 11.35 points was the highest since 2010.  

I mentioned this in 2016, so hopefully some of you made some money, although I must say that my inbox hasn't been overflowing with thank yous or donations. From 2016: 

One trend that did hold true again this season was that of favourites doing well in their first games after the break. The rationale for this is that although the better teams are likely to be better represented at the All-Star game, many of those will only put in a less than exhausting cameo performance, while the majority of their players enjoy the break and get some rest which apparently benefits better teams more than worse teams.

While I'm not typically a big fan of once a year systems, (a losing day lingers in the memory for a year), this one does appear to have some merit.  

Going back to the dawn of the MLB database, season 2004, (2007 for the Run Line), this idea has double digit ROIs of 13.6% on the Run Line, and 14.9% on the Money Line, and a total profit of 74.65 points.

Running Joseph Buchdahl's p-value calculator, the probability that the Money Line returns are by luck alone comes out at 0.24%, or 1 in 417.