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 7,918 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +1% across 2,399 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 rely heavily on Nate Silver’s presidential election model for our election futures. For college football bets, we primarily use our own model. For NFL bets, we lean on ESPN’s FPI.
Active markets are MLB futures and single-game college football.
The context on each market:
MLB futures – In four of the five years we’ve done these, we’ve profited, twice by large margins. We began this season with 750 units in our portfolio. We placed two medium confidence bets most weekdays throughout the regular season, as usual, then pivoted to placing a more variable number throughout the playoffs, as usual. We’re currently big fans of the Tigers, Padres, and Mets, and we do not want the Dodgers to win it all.
Single-game college football bets – Our history here is mediocre, and we’re off to a really bad start this season, with an 11–15 record on the young year. We’re down 5.10 units heading into today. We did go 4–1 last week, but we lost last night.
World Series
The value remains positive on the Phillies, so we keep chipping away at that liability. This increases our Dodgers liability, but our only hope with the Dodgers is, as is often the case, that they get eliminated before we enter a position where we have to ask about hedging. Thankfully, the decrease in Phillies liability is disproportionately larger than the increase in Dodgers liability.
There’s also value on Cleveland and Kansas City, though Cleveland’s is very narrow. The nice thing about what we’re seeing on all three of these is that not only do FanGraphs’s Playoff Odds show positive EV, but ZiPS—which considers individual pitching matchups, unlike those Playoff Odds—is higher on them in each of their Division Series. In other words: If you don’t consider starting pitching matchups, the value is good. If you do consider them, it gets even better. Here’s that high, high-level look at our portfolio, with each team’s upside and downside limited to series in which they could play (e.g., the NLCS outcome isn’t factored into the Royals’ number here):
| Team | Remaining Upside/Downside |
| Tigers | 1128 |
| Padres | 631 |
| Mets | 270 |
| Royals | 44 |
| Guardians | 6 |
| Yankees | -22 |
| Phillies | -104 |
| Dodgers | -308 |
Pick: Philadelphia to win +450. Medium confidence. x3
Pick: Cleveland to win +1200. Medium confidence.
Pick: Kansas City to win +1500. Medium confidence.
Michigan State @ Oregon
Movelor likes both Oregon and UNLV tonight. The argument in UNLV’s favor is that their Movelor rating has improved the second-most of any FBS team in the country this year, making it very unlikely Movelor’s too low on them. (Syracuse’s rating has improved as well, but not by a noteworthy amount.) The argument in Oregon’s favor is that the Ducks have mostly played to Movelor’s expectations, especially over the last few weeks. It’s had a good read on them. With Michigan State one of the six teams closest to their preseason Movelor rating, Movelor should have a good grasp on that game.
We’re going with that second argument. We’d rather Movelor have a good grasp on the teams involved, even if the door is open for our model to still underrate UNLV.
It’s helpful too to see the argument in favor of the other side, and while we have that with both these games, we especially have it with Oregon. We can see why this line would get hemmed like it has been. Michigan State’s strong defensively, and Jonathan Smith knows Oregon really, really well, having arrived in East Lansing from Oregon State. Michigan State will try to slow things down, eat clock, and rely on its defense to keep things close enough to take a shot at the end. We understand that will be the approach. We just think the market is overrating the degree to which it will work.
Pick: Oregon –23.5 (–115). Low confidence.
