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 –0.8% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 5,051 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.
Our last futures of the week, plus the return of MLB moneylines.
Single-game MLB bets: On the season, we’re 56–44–2, we’re up 6.78 units, we’re up 7% (the average line on our winners has been –110). April was great, May was bad, June was good. We’re profitable so far on the month of July.
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 121.96 units, or 11.7%.
Washington @ St. Louis
The Cardinals have been bad on the baseball field, and they’re talking about trading away valuable players to get ready for 2024. This is a big red flag. Morale, one would imagine, could be quite bad, bad enough to shift probabilities. It also, however, an opportunity. Because for as bad as the Cardinals have been on the baseball field, they’re pretty good on paper, making this much more like the Nationals’ normal games than one against, say, the Royals. The market has the Cards as a heavy favorite, but not heavy enough.
Pick: St. Louis to win –192. Low confidence. (Williams and Mikolas must start.)
World Series
These odds are still long on Atlanta as far as championship favorites in sports go, but they do hint at how powerful Atlanta is right now. They’re the only team in baseball overwhelmingly likely to make the playoffs. The only one. Somehow, they’re still valuable at +350.
Toronto, meanwhile, has quietly put themselves in a great position. They might be the most talented team in the American League by the time October rolls around, and in the AL East race, they trail a team that was fading entering the All-Star Break and a team that’s been overachieving for twelve calendar months. We like the Blue Jays to make some noise in the second half, and we like them to enter the playoffs in good position to make even more.
Pick: Atlanta to win +350. Medium confidence.
Pick: Toronto to win +2200. Medium confidence.
