Editor’s Note: For about two and a half years now, Joe has been publishing picks here and back at All Things NIT, our former site. There have been moments of elation (the Nationals winning the 2019 World Series, the first two months of the 2019-20 college basketball season). There have been moments of frustration (the Dodgers’ 2020 NLCS comeback, the second two months of the 2019-20 college basketball season). Overall, the results have been positive, with an average return on investment, per pick, of 2% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 1,404 published picks, not including pending futures. And while 2% might not sound enormous, you can do a lot with it over time.
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. FanGraphs is heavily used in making MLB picks.
Futures odds, as usual, come from Bovada due to the lack of a current/accurate Vegas consensus online. First, though…
Seattle @ Texas
At the beginning of February, we called Chris Flexen the best signing anyone had made all offseason (no joke—it was in a dollars per WAR sense). He’s been great for Seattle so far, with a 3.33 ERA and a 3.29 FIP across five starts. His xERA’s up at 4.07, but even that’s lower than the FanGraphs projection we use to make these picks, which has him as a 4.27 FIP guy. What a signing.
Pick: Seattle to win +100. Low confidence.
Chicago (AL) @ Kansas City
Brad Keller’s had his struggles to start the year, but the fact his velocity isn’t down leads one to believe that the possibility it’s just a small sample is underrated here.
Pick: Kansas City +1.5 (-125). Low confidence.
Toronto @ Houston
Ross Stripling has only made three starts. His FIP is 3.89. No, last year didn’t go well for him, but the expectation should still be that he’s a sub-5.00 ERA/FIP pitcher.
Pick: Toronto to win +125. Low confidence.
NL Central Champion
The NL Central isn’t a crapshoot. The Brewers are the favorites, followed by the Cardinals, followed by the Cubs and Reds, with each team in this sentence about half as likely to win as the one preceding it—FanGraphs has the percentages at 44/29/13/14.
Still, that’s a pretty wide variance. The Brewers aren’t favored over the field, and that’s with an expectation that Christian Yelich will play most of the year, which is looking a little dicey right now.
At the moment, the Cubs are undervalued if you assume rosters won’t change much the rest of the year. That’s a flawed assumption, of course—the better way to put it is that you assume rosters will change by the same amount amongst division contenders, and even that is a flawed assumption, because the Cubs are more likely to sell than the Cardinals and Brewers.
Still, there’s good value here, and by diversifying our NL Central portfolio (we’ve got three units down on the Brewers—one at +300 and two at +165) we bring our overall probability of profiting off of division futures as a whole up by a good little chunk (we’re also in on Boston, Kansas City, Cleveland, San Diego, and the Mets—all at varying odds and quantities). It’s a nice piece to have.
Pick: Chicago (NL) +1100. Low confidence.
