Editor’s Note: Since November 2018, Joe has been publishing picks here and back at All Things NIT, our former site. Overall, the results have been mixed, with an average return on investment, per pick, of -5% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 3,381 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of 0.3% across 762 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us). Our ETA for having the overall number back profitable is currently November 7th, the likeliest date of a World Series Game 7 and the eve of both college basketball season and Election Day.
Use these picks at your own risk. Only you are responsible for any money you lose, and you should not bet more than you can afford to lose. If you have a gambling problem, get help.
Lines for these come from the Vegas consensus or the closest approximation available at the time picks are written, unless otherwise noted. For futures bets (in both sports and politics) and motorsports bets, odds are taken from the better option between Bovada and BetOnline as our best approximation of the Vegas consensus, which isn’t currently/accurately available online. FanGraphs is heavily used in making MLB picks.
Hy-VeeDeals.com 250 (IndyCar @ Iowa: Race 1)
These odds are really short for IndyCar and really short for an oval. Still, Josef Newgarden’s won three of the last six races at Iowa, he’s won each of the last two at Gateway (I’d imagine Gateway’s better correlated with Iowa than Texas is, given it’s a short track and Texas is intermediate, but I could be wrong and Newgarden won the last race at Texas too), and while he didn’t look great in practice yesterday, it was only practice. With nobody else popping out, we’ll pay the expensive price and try to pick up a handful of units.
Pick: Josef Newgarden to win +375. Low confidence.
