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 -4% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 3,792 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of 0.8% across 1,126 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us). Should the Phillies win the World Series, we’ll be profitable again when that happens. Should the Astros win, we may have to wait until Election Day or later.
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 (in both sports and politics) 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. FiveThirtyEight’s SPI is heavily used in making soccer picks. ESPN’s FPI is heavily used in making NFL picks.
We’re back on our MLB futures effort today, and for context on it: We started the season with 1,040 units available. We’ve so far profited 12.84 units. We have 746.84 units in our bankroll. Before the following picks are placed, we’re in a scenario where we’ll profit by an additional 331.30 units should the Phillies win it all, and lose an additional 64.50 units should the Astros win it all.
World Series (Hedge)
The route is there to hedge this into a happy profit, and in most years, we would do that. In most years, we’d put 250 units down on the Astros and lock ourselves into a decent little return. Given our larger picture, though, we’re not doing that. We’re aiming for upside. We’ve got a 219.08-unit all-time deficit at the moment, and while our high/medium-confidence picks are profitable, we’d prefer to be profitable on everything, and the path to that is still very possible.
The value really does seem to be on the Phillies, which makes this tougher. If the value was on the Astros, it would feel more justifiable to pour units onto them and eliminate our downside. Instead, it’s on the Phillies, so every unit we spend on the Astros is, in a vacuum, a unit poorly spent. The Astros are the better team, they have home field advantage, and they match up well with both Aaron Nola and Zack Wheeler, but the Phillies are good enough to have a chance in every single game. This is not the ALCS, where the Yankees were in a terrible position in Game 1. The Phillies are one of the best teams in baseball on paper, and they will not be overmatched in a single game.
Still, though, we can’t lose units on this futures campaign. That would be a foolish thing to allow to be possible. We’re fools, to an extent—we’re doing this, after all—but we’re tepid fools. There’s a 112.22-unit gap right now between our Phillies upside and the amount necessary to bring us back to even all-time. The earliest the Phillies could be eliminated is five days from now. That gives us 22.44 units per day to work with, even in the worst scenario. We’ll use 22 units today in a hedge and hope like heck that the Phils take Game 1 and give us a better angle tomorrow.
Pick: Houston to win -180. Medium confidence. x11
