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 5,048 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.
Both markets today. One note on this: We’re going to do MLB futures on Monday. We’ll still take three more weekdays off of these at some point in July, likely still next week, but we don’t know which days yet. It’s going to depend on how markets are or aren’t moving and what our portfolio needs.
Single-game MLB bets: On the season, we’re 55–42–2, we’re up 7.99 units, we’re up 8% (the average line on our winners has been –110). April was great, May was bad, June was good. We’re off to a good start in 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 91.49 units, or 8.8%.
Seattle @ Houston
If I had to guess, this line is a product of Luis Castillo being slightly overvalued by the market, something which probably traces back to how big a trade deadline target he recently was, and Hunter Brown being slightly undervalued, something which probably traces back to Brown never getting stud prospect hype because his stellar performance is somewhat quiet, especially in Houston. We like the Astros’ value here.
Pick: Houston to win –105. Low confidence. (Castillo and Brown must start.)
World Series
The first of these is straightforward: The Blue Jays swept a doubleheader yesterday and the market didn’t account for that as dramatically as it should have. This happens more than you’d think.
The second is more interesting. The Mets are dead men walking…right?
At the moment, the Mets are 6.5 games back of the final playoff spot in the National League. This is…not that much. It’s a lot—a whole week’s worth of games with only something like twelve weeks left in the regular season—but it’s only 6.5 games, and the Mets only need to catch three of the Brewers, Giants, Phillies, Reds, Diamondbacks, and Marlins, all clearly flawed teams. Their vaunted rotation is starting to come together, with Kodai Senga the best on the team so far this year and Justin Verlander putting up good numbers lately. They get to play seven games against the White Sox and Nationals between now and the Trade Deadline.
In short, it’s fair to believe in the Mets. In fact, now is a really good time to buy in. It’s unlikely, but so was Max Scherzer’s first World Series-winning campaign early in that season.
Pick: Toronto to win +2000. Medium confidence.
Pick: New York (NL) to win +7500. Medium confidence.
