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 -5% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 3,374 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of 0.3% across 762 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us). Our ETA for having the overall number back profitable is currently November 7th, the likeliest date of a World Series Game 7 and the eve of both college basketball season and Election Day.
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 have a gambling problem, get help.
Lines for these come from the Vegas consensus or the closest approximation available at the time picks are written, unless otherwise noted. For futures bets (in both sports and politics) and motorsports bets, odds are taken from the better option between Bovada and BetOnline as our best approximation of the Vegas consensus, which isn’t currently/accurately available online. FanGraphs is heavily used in making MLB picks.
More on this in today’s notes (which will be available on the homepage a few hours after these bets are posted), but in addition to MLB futures, we’ve got some Midterm Election bets today. For context on the MLB futures: The portfolio started at the beginning of the season with 520 units, with another 520 in reserve in case we need them for hedging down the line. For context on Midterm Election units: We aren’t setting aside a portfolio of a specific size, since we haven’t done this over the long term before and therefore don’t exactly know how it’s going to work in terms of pacing, but every time we do these, we’re going to try to assort bets together in a way which leaves us comfortable with said assortment as an entity. If that doesn’t make sense, well, more on it in right here:
2022 United States Midterm Elections
We’ve split today’s bets into 100 units, so the units used are %’s of our total bet. The way we chose the bets was to look through all three of FiveThirtyEight’s election forecasts, circling races where one side graded out as positive-value (the % likelihood all three forecasts assigned was enough to make the bet’s expected net value greater than zero), with one tiny exception (one of the models has the eROI at -1% on Beto O’Rourke losing while the other two have it firmly positive). From those circled races, we chose these nine, which we were able to shape into the assortment below.
With this assortment, if every betting market favorite wins (we call the Nevada gubernatorial election a loss in this scenario, since both sides are at -115), we’ll profit by 5%. If every 538 favorite wins (using the narrowest definition of 538 favorite, re: the three separate models), we’ll profit by 18%. If there is a “red wave” so extreme that Democrats even lose the Maryland gubernatorial race, we’ll lose 32%. If there is a “blue wave” so extreme that Stacey Abrams and Beto O’Rourke each win their gubernatorial election, we’ll lose 34%. The 34% loss is a risk we’re willing to take. We like our anchors, we like our upside, we like today’s assortment. We’ll keep checking back on this in the months ahead.
Pick: Beto O’Rourke to NOT win Texas gubernatorial election -700. Medium confidence. x19
Pick: Democratic candidate to win Maryland gubernatorial election -650. Medium confidence. x14
Pick: Stacey Abrams to NOT win Georgia gubernatorial election -400. Medium confidence. x10
Pick: Democratic candidate to win Nevada gubernatorial election -115. Low confidence. x3
Pick: Democratic candidate to win Nevada U.S. Senate election +140. Low confidence. x3
Pick: Democratic candidate to win New Hampshire U.S. Senate election -180. Low confidence. x3
Pick: Democratic Party to control U.S. Senate +150. Low confidence. x3
Pick: Democratic candidate to win Kansas gubernatorial election +235. Low confidence. x1
Pick: Cheri Beasley to win North Carolina U.S. Senate election +400. Low confidence. x1
World Series
We’re building quite the position on Atlanta, and that’s by design. They’re among the World Series favorites, and we like the prospect of having a super-upside route, just like the one we had in 2019.
As for the Brewers, well, Brandon Woodruff sure looked good the other night in his return from the IL.
More of these on Monday.
Pick: Atlanta to win +1400. Medium confidence.
Pick: Milwaukee to win +2000. Medium confidence.
