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 –0.5% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 5,369 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of +3.1% across 1,754 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. Movelor is heavily used in making college football picks, with some references to ESPN’s FPI and SP+. FPI is heavily used in making NFL picks, but mostly futures.
Today’s MLB futures, tonight’s college football. Here’s the context on each market.
MLB futures: We began the season with 750 units in our MLB futures portfolio. 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 those 750 units is 103.90 units, or 13.9%.
Single-game college football bets: On the season, we’re 43–34–1. We’re up 5.87 units and up 8%.
NLCS
This is the value play today, with the Diamondbacks standing a better chance of getting the series to 2–2 tonight than the odds imply. It’s not massive value—we’re mostly holding, we are not putting a lot of units down on any front today—but we like the price.
Pick: Arizona to win +325. Medium confidence.
ALCS (Hedge)
We don’t love the price here, and I think that’s interesting. I would think the Astros would be likelier to be overvalued in this series. I wonder if sportsbooks have accumulated some liability on the Rangers over the course of the regular season. Either way, this is the cheapest way for us to pay for our NLCS play without introducing unnecessary risk. Combined, the value of these two plays nets to a positive number.
Pick: Texas to win +114. Medium confidence.
SMU @ Temple
The spread on this is almost identical to where Movelor has it, rising to meet us over the last couple days. The total, then, is our target, and we don’t do a lot of these.
The way we view this is a two-directional tug of war: Going one direction is SMU’s solid defense and accompanying frequent difficulty scoring. Going the other is Temple’s atrocious defense but occasional ability to put some points on the board. At the 23ish-point spread, do we trust Temple to get to 16 points? We aren’t sure, but if they don’t, we think there’s a good enough chance they let SMU run away from them and build some credibility for itself in ratings systems like ours.
Pick: Over 55 (–110). Low confidence.
