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 -3% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 3,029 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).
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 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.
Only MLB futures today. We’ll get back to hockey tomorrow. For context on the MLB futures: We started the year with 520 units in our MLB futures portfolio, but we also have another 520 set aside should we need to hedge down the line.
NL Central
This is back into the sphere of positive value, so we’re on it again, though we’re now close to a situation in which whoever wins the NL Central, we don’t make a profit within it. This isn’t bad. So long as the other divisions outweigh it.
As things currently stand, if you say a team needs to be 11% likely or likelier on FanGraphs this morning to have a realistic chance to win their division, there are 24 possible combinations of division winners, made up of eleven teams. Of those eleven, we’re fond of seven. All teams but the Cardinals, White Sox, Dodgers, and Mets are profitable teams for us within their respective divisions, at least as the portfolio currently stands. With those four, the White Sox give us the biggest swing. We’ve invested 104 units so far in the division markets, and if the White Sox lose their division, we’re at least 24 units better for it. With the Dodgers, that number is 20. With the Cardinals, that number is 9.81. With the Mets, it’s 4.05. Where does this leave us? Two of our outs are simply the White Sox or Dodgers losing their division. If both those teams win their division, we need both Milwaukee and Atlanta to pull it out in theirs if we’re going to profit within division markets in total.
This isn’t a bad place to be. We’re almost always going to have liabilities of some sort. That’s how gambling works. But limiting those liabilities, and having them this limited this early in the season, is what we’re trying to do. While, of course, preserving upside, which we have. If the Twins, Padres, Brewers, and Braves all pull it out? We’re up more than 46 units on these investments. That’s a 45% return, which we can then reinvest in the postseason.
Things are going well. But we’ve got a long way to go.
Pick: St. Louis to win +115. Medium confidence.
ALCS
This is valuable in the tiniest way, but it’s valuable, and we have nothing down on the Guardians anywhere but in their division market. They’re competitive, likelier to make the playoffs than the Angels are by a long shot. Part of this is that they’re playing so well. Part of it too is that the Twins and White Sox are full of holes. The nice thing about getting them at these odds is that we won’t have to worry about a second play on them for breadth’s sake for a long, long time.
Pick: Cleveland to win +4500. Medium confidence.
