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 –2.4% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,285 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.2% across 2,268 completed high and medium-confidence picks. The low confidence picks are the problem. Most of our picks are in the low confidence category.
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’re afraid you might have a gambling problem, seek help.
Odds for these come from the better option between Bovada and BetOnline. We used to use the Vegas Consensus, but it’s no longer consistently available in an accurate form online. We rely heavily on FanGraphs for all our MLB action.
Active markets today: Major League Baseball moneylines. We’re a little late for futures, but those will be back on weekdays starting Monday. We think today will be the last weekday off for those for a little while.
Single-day MLB bets: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%, betting strictly moneylines. We’re trying the same approach this year. We’re 5–10 so far, down 6.19 units. It’s been a bad start, but we did have a nice mid-April run last year, so we’re hoping to turn it around quickly. One difference: We only did one bet a day last year. Today, we’re trying two, in an effort to raise our probability of hitting at least one of the pair.
Colorado @ Toronto
Ryan Feltner is up to 14 strikeouts and four walks so far this season in eleven innings pitched. He’s done this against the Rays and the Diamondbacks, both respectable lineups. Will he continue at this pace? No. But he’s probably not being over-valued by FanGraphs.
Pick: Colorado to win +198. Low confidence. (Feltner and Gausman must start.)
Atlanta @ Miami
It’s a similar story with Trevor Rogers, the 2021 runner up for National League Rookie of the Year. Healthy again, he’s had some control issues in the early going, but neither the Pirates nor the Cardinals made much solid contact against him. Can he hold the Braves in check? Probably not. But the value’s there, and Max Fried—like Kevin Gausman in our other pick—has been bad to start the year. Again, Fried and Gausman should regress, which will be a positive thing for them, but it’s the absence of a red flag.
By picking both these, we get ourselves better than a 50% chance of hitting on one of them. Bad downside, but we’re already getting smoked this month.
Pick: Miami to win +176. Low confidence. (Fried and Rogers must start.)
