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% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,583 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +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. We rely heavily on Nate Silver’s presidential election model for our election futures.
Active markets today: MLB futures and moneylines.
Single-day MLB bets: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%, betting strictly moneylines. We’ve tried a similar approach this year. We’re 99–85–2 so far, down 4.98 units. We’ve mostly been treading water lately, but we haven’t been able to sustain making up significant ground.
MLB futures: We have a great history with these, though the last two years we’ve only made small profits. In both 2019 and 2021, I believe we recorded better than a 50% ROI. In 2020, we lost about 25% of our portfolio. We began this season with 750 units in our 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. We place two medium-confidence bets most weekdays until sometime in September when the scenarios become more specific.
Chicago (AL) @ Kansas City
We’re generally a pro-Chris Flexen enterprise here, but we really like Michael Wacha, and we don’t expect the White Sox to attack their sell-off auditions with any particular vigor, given how they’ve approached the rest of the season so far. This is pricey, but it’s hard to find good bets today with everyone rested and so many good starting pitchers on the bump.
Pick: Kansas City to win –219. Low confidence. (Flexen and Wacha must start.)
NL West
On the futures side, we’re still doing weird stuff, because we trust our process and this is what our process tells us to do.
With this one, the Diamondbacks had gotten close to being an unprofitable NL West scenario for us, and there’s comfortably positive value available at these odds, and we take such odds in such situations.
What we’d add is that the Diamondbacks are probably the likeliest team to catch the Dodgers, accounting for Yu Darvish’s absence in San Diego. If someone’s going to do it, it’s likelier to be the D-Backs than anyone else. Since we already have big upside on the Padres and Giants, this leaves us fading the Dodgers in the division, which is unreasonable—we think the Dodgers are going to win the West, like everyone else does—but not without a lot of value.
Pick: Arizona to win +2000. Medium confidence.
AL East
On this side, the Rays had already become an unprofitable AL East scenario, and since we still don’t think they’re selling, we’ll take the shot. The path to both the Orioles and the Yankees falling apart is unlikely, but you can see it, with the Orioles so young and the Yankees so prone to dysfunction.
One thing we’ll add about our process: We changed it this year to not care so much about at least breaking even on division futures as a whole. The last few years, we bet heavily on division favorites in order to shield ourselves from losses on underdogs. This year, we’re more comfortable taking losses in the name of positive-value bets, and that’s opening us up to do more in the LCS and World Series markets. It’s riskier, but the upside is much better, and having erred towards breaking even the last two years, we want our upside back.
Pick: Tampa Bay to win +25000. Medium confidence.
