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 3,377 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.
Just MLB futures Monday through Friday these days. For context on these: We started the season with 520 units in our MLB futures portfolio, with another 520 in reserve in case we need them for hedging down the line.
NL East
There’s narrow value on the Mets today, so we’ll add this, shoring up our worst-case on the division side, which feels a little important since we’re simultaneously throwing two units at…
Pick: New York to win -150. Medium confidence.
AL Central
…the Tigers.
The deal with this bet is as follows:
FanGraphs is showing the Tigers as 0.3% likely to win the AL Central, which means in somewhere between 25 and 34 of their most recent 10,000 simulations of the rest of the season (I believe this is how their Playoff Odds work, based on all the wiggling), the Tigers were division champions. Is this an accurate number? Possibly. The simulations don’t account for the trade deadline, where the Tigers are presumed sellers and their division foes are presumed holders if not buyers. But at the same time, the things that need to happen for the Tigers to get into this division race (we don’t need them to win it, nice as that would be—even them briefly emerging as a contender would give us the leverage necessary to pump enough hedges into whoever’s left of the Twins, White Sox, and Guardians to corner the division markets as a whole) align well with what needs to happen for them to become holders themselves: Effectively, they need to stay hot. Ideally for these next two weeks.
These next two weeks are an advantageous time for Detroit, to this point one of the biggest underachievers of the year relative to preseason expectations. They’ve won five straight, and while they’re twelve games below .500, each of their next thirteen games comes against an opponent currently at or below .500 themselves. Sweep the White Sox this weekend and they’ll be just one and a half back of third place.
Is a sweep likely? No. Is winning something like eleven of these thirteen likely, making the stretch 16 wins in 18 games? No. But we’re dealing with 400-to-1 odds here. The question isn’t likelihood. It’s believability. And against the White Sox, Royals, Guardians, and A’s, a bunch of wins (and potentially a rough patch from the White Sox, Guardians, and Twins) isn’t out of the question.
Pick: Detroit to win +40000. Medium confidence.
