Editor’s Note: Over a sample size of 494 completed bets (this doesn’t include outstanding futures picks), Joe’s picks published here and back at All Things NIT, our former site, have an average return on investment of 4% when weighted by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high). This, compared to other picks consistently published online, is pretty good. It would not be a great annual ROI for an investor. But instead it’s coming, on average, on each of these picks.
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Only one pick today.
As always:
- Lines come from the Vegas Consensus at the time this is written, or the best approximation I can find of it online.
- Data and predictions from FanGraphs, Baseball Reference, Baseball Savant, Spotrac, Sagarin, Massey Ratings, and ESPN is/are often used and/or cited.
- The blurbs often aren’t justifications of the picks. Often, they’re instead just notes about something or someone related to the pick. Something that interests me. You are not required to read these. I don’t explain the picks because in general, the rationale behind each pick is the same, so it would be boring to say over and over again that the numbers I use project a good return on investment and I see no red flags significant enough to make me hold off.
Toronto @ Atlanta
It’s been more than a month now, and Blue Jays rookie Bo Bichette has yet to stop raking.
Bichette came into the MLB with a bang, hitting doubles nine days in a row beginning with just his third career game. He’s cooled off a bit, as one would expect, but he’s still lighting up the scoreboard, with a 153 wRC+ through 148 PA’s.
Bichette has been lucky, to a degree. His BABIP’s too high to be maintained, at .400, but as one of the faster hitters in the MLB, a slight overperformance in that category would be expected. His XWOBA sits at .362, meaning he’s hitting the ball hard enough to warrant roughly a 125 wRC+. Being 25% better than an MLB-average hitter at age 21 is no small task. Which means that even if Bo Bichette does come back down to Earth soon, he’ll be standing on high ground.
Pick: Toronto +1.5 (+100). Low confidence.
