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 5,041 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. We expect to place no futures over the weekend, as usual, but to have them back on Monday. We aren’t sure about Tuesday just yet.
Single-game MLB bets: On the season, we’re 52–39–1, we’re up 6.84 units, we’re up 7% (the average line on our winners has been –113). April was great, May was bad, June has been good.
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 120.27 units, or 11.6%.
Tampa Bay @ Seattle
Bryce Miller was bound to cool off after his ridiculous debut earlier this year. Now that he’s settled into something more in line with projections, his performance is still good. 24 years old, Miller’s got a 5.33 FIP even in his five “bad” starts, the ones which came on the heels of him allowing just four runs over his first 31 innings of work. A 5.33 FIP is bad, but his true self lies somewhere between that and those first 31 innings. We’ll take it against an opponent making his first start since leaving a game last week with back issues.
Pick: Seattle to win +111. Low confidence. (McClanahan and Miller must start.)
NLCS
It’s Phillies day today for our futures, because the Phillies have gotten hot and the markets haven’t caught up just yet. It’s probably not a disagreement on what the Phillies will do from here. It’s probably a disagreement on how good a position the Phillies have played themselves into. We see disagreements like this quite a bit.
Pick: Philadelphia to win +1400. Medium confidence.
World Series
It’s the same story here.
While these don’t leave us heavily invested in the Phils, it’s a good start, and it significantly lessens our Phillies downside, which is nice given they’re the NL’s sixth-likeliest playoff team.
Pick: Philadelphia to win +2800. Medium confidence.
