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 –2% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,373 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2% across 2,268 completed high and medium-confidence picks. The low confidence picks are the problem. Most of our picks are in the low confidence category.
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 from 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. We rely heavily on FanGraphs for all our MLB action. We’re relying on Neil Paine’s NBA forecast as the basis for our playoff futures portfolio. We use our own Gelo model as the basis for our NHL playoff futures portfolio.
Active markets today: Major League Baseball moneylines, plus MLB, NBA, and NHL futures.
Single-day MLB bets: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%, betting strictly moneylines. We’re trying the same approach this year. We’re 40–44 so far, down 8.71 units. This is like when a young team unexpectedly performs well one season then opens slow to start the next year: We don’t know whether we’re going to heat back up or if we’re actually just bad at this.
MLB futures: We have a great history with these, though the last two years we’ve only made small profits. In both 2019 and 2021, I believe we recorded better than a 50% ROI. In 2020, we lost about 25% of our portfolio. We began this season with 750 units in our 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. We place two medium-confidence bets most weekdays until sometime in September when the scenarios become more specific.
NBA futures: We’ve only done these once before, but they went well. I believe we made a 7% return on our investment last year. We started at the beginning of the Play-In Tournament with a 100-unit portfolio. Right now, we’re mostly just placing one future per day. We’re up 2.79 units so far.
NHL futures: We’ve had mixed results on these. In 2022, we lost 25% of our futures portfolio. Last year, we made a 33% return. We began on the first day of the playoffs with a 100-unit portfolio. Right now, we’re mostly placing just one future per day. We’re down 0.20 units so far.
Chicago (AL) @ New York (AL)
There isn’t much we like today, and we’re not about to force anything, given how our recent bets have gone. We do like the Yankees to win, even if the price is expensive. Fresh bullpen, hot bats, Nestor Cortes has quietly put together a good year so far. We’ll roll with them to get us a third of a unit or so. Win 23 straight bets like this and our MLB moneylines are back profitable on the season.
Pick: New York to win –265. Low confidence. (Clevinger and Cortes must start.)
ALCS
The Astros have won five in a row heading into this weekend’s series against the Brewers. They’re five games out of a playoff spot, but that’s close enough to have them on the right side of 50% in FanGraphs’s Playoff Odds. Also, as we’ll see again with the Nuggets in a minute, sportsbooks are split in these markets, which I think is mostly a function of how quickly or slowly they’ve updated to account for this week’s results.
Pick: Houston to win +900. Medium confidence.
World Series
Same phenomenon here. The value’s a little lesser, because books tend to overrate the American League in World Series odds during the regular season, but there’s value here, and we’ll take it.
Pick: Houston to win +1800. Medium confidence.
NBA Finals
This isn’t a great value play, but we probably aren’t going to see better value on the Nuggets for about a month. After last night, books are divided on their Denver price. In the event the Nuggets lose on Sunday, they’re gone anyway (we have enough Timberwolves upside that we’re able to leverage it here). In the event the Nuggets win, they’ll be up against a Mavericks or Thunder team with a lot more flaws than they have. It most likely won’t be until the Finals that we see this price climb again, and even that will depend on them falling behind in the series.
Pick: Denver to win +350. Low confidence.
Western Conference (NHL)
The Canucks and Oilers still have the same odds to win the Western Conference, and we think that’s wrong. We’re not high on the Canucks so much as we continue to be low on the Oilers, who are now one game from elimination. This does open us up that much further to getting gutted by Edmonton, but with our Rangers upside what it is, we think we have the space to add a little more on Vancouver, chasing the value where we find it.
Pick: Vancouver to win +350. Low confidence.
