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 –0.7% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 5,072 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of +3.1% across 1,617 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us).
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 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. FanGraphs is heavily used in making MLB picks.
MLB futures, MLB moneyline. The futures will be off as usual this weekend, so these are the last ones of the week. (We are not yet to the days of weekend futures after all.)
Single-game MLB bets: On the season, we’re 69–50–4, we’re up 15.05 units, we’re up 12% (the average line on our winners has been –106). April was great, May was bad, June was good, July was great. We’ve yet to lose in August.
MLB futures: We began the season with 750 units in our MLB futures portfolio, with the intent being to spend 500 of those over the regular season and keep 250 in reserve for the postseason and/or hedging & arbitrage opportunities. This is circular, because we use FanGraphs probabilities to guide our picks, but if we use FanGraphs probabilities and include today’s plays, our mean expected return on the 750 units (based on what we’ve bet so far) is 86.47 units, or 8.3%.
Miami @ Texas
A few weeks ago, my brother pointed out something interesting about the Rangers. What he pointed out hasn’t changed. The Rangers have a 135 wRC+ at home. They have a 107 wRC+ on the road. The way wRC+ works is that average offensive performance is 100, with 107 constituting offensive performance 7% better than average and 135 meaning offensive performance 35% better than average. In practice, then, this means the Rangers have been 28 percentage points better at home than on the road on the offensive side of the ball.
I don’t know what’s causing this. My brother theorized sign stealing, which is pretty darn fair to speculate about given what we’ve seen in baseball over the last decade (and long before that), but would be weird in the days of PitchCom (it would be so funny if a team hacked into whatever radio channel those things use). Whatever’s going on, I’ve been privately betting the Rangers in home games and betting against them in road games ever since he pointed it out, and that approach is 12–3 over that stretch. So, with absolutely nothing on today’s board fitting our parameters, that’s what we’re doing. Go hit some bombs, Rangers. I hope you know what’s coming.
Pick: Texas to win –132. Low confidence. (Luzardo and Montgomery must start.)
NL Central
We’re doubling up on this one today, and part of it is portfolio mechanics (more on that in a second), but there’s also just a lot of value here. The Brewers have been undervalued within this division almost all season, first because they weren’t the best team on paper (the Cardinals were), and then because of various surges, most recently that of the Reds. At this point, the likeliest outcome is the Brewers finishing the job, and it’s more than 50% likely.
As for the portfolio mechanics…
With the Orioles now an aggregate favorite to win the AL East (according to markets, which we doubt), we’re poised to lose 17.15 units on our division portion of the portfolio if all the current favorites hold on to win. We don’t think the Orioles should be favored, but the point is, that’s a big risk, even if it’s one we’d be happy to see play out in the Orioles’ case because we’re so long on them to win the ALCS. If the Orioles, Astros, Twins, Braves, Dodgers, and Brewers win their divisions, we’ll have lost 17.15 units on net heading into the playoffs.
We don’t gain much if the Rangers pass the Astros, and while we gain a lot if the Rays pass the Orioles back, again, we don’t really want that to happen. The benefit of the Orioles winning the division is too high in our long run. We do gain a decent amount if the Cubs pass both the Reds and the Brewers, and that makes this an easy lever to pull, especially with the value what it is (+27% eROI, using the same FanGraphs numbers we use every day). The Reds remain a massive risk for us in every market, but while they get a little reprieve this weekend, hosting the Nationals, they’ve got a tough West Coast trip coming up at the end of the month that we suspect might finish them off, or at least set the Cubs up to finish them off over Labor Day.
In short? We think this is a good bet, for us and for pretty much anyone. We think it’s so good we’re placing it twice.
Pick: Milwaukee to win +115. Medium confidence.
Pick: Milwaukee to win +115. Medium confidence.
