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 –2.0% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,763 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.6% across 2,293 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 today: MLB futures, single-game MLB, single-game college football, and this week’s election futures.
Here’s the history on each and how we approach them:
MLB moneylines: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%. We’re 166–141–4 so far this year, down 8.39 units. A little more than a month ago, we pivoted to a different set of systems. We’re 54–39–1 since the pivot, up 4.41 units. The biggest driver of that success has been Heat Index, our pet metric which gauges the gap between how hot different teams are. Together, various combinations of Heat Index’s first, second, and third picks have gone 39–15–1, generating a 7.59-unit return. In response to a recent plateau, we shortened Heat Index’s sample the other day to two weeks and reverted to only betting one game a day with it. We’ll keep monitoring its performance.
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 later this month when the scenarios become more specific.
Single-game college football bets: Our history here is mediocre, and true to form, we’re 5–7 so far this year. We’re down 2.56 units heading into tonight.
Election futures: These have been our best market historically, with a 17% overall ROI and significant profits both times we’ve done them—in 2020 and 2022. We started this year with a 1,000-unit portfolio and a plan to bet it as a series of 20 mini-portfolios, each leveraged against itself. We’re still approaching it in that manner, with most mini-portfolios placed and published on Fridays (they used to be published on Saturdays, but we pivoted recently). So far, we’re up 18.50 units. Those are going back into the bets.
Tampa Bay @ Cleveland
It’s close between this one and White Sox/A’s, but Heat Index gives the edge to these two.
Pick: Cleveland to win –174. Low confidence. (Littell and Bibee must start.)
NLCS
Not a lot of NL action yesterday. The value’s still good here.
Pick: Arizona to win +1200. Medium confidence.
World Series
We repeat: Not a lot of NL action yesterday. The value’s still good here.
Pick: Arizona to win +2500. Medium confidence.
Arizona @ Kansas State
For Kansas State, the question is: How good are they? We know what they do, but we don’t know how good they are at it. With Arizona, the questions are more fundamental: Is this defense terrible? Can this offense do anything if Tetairoa McMillan is double-covered?
We’re glad this dipped under an even seven points. We’d like six, but we’ll take six and a half.
Pick: Kansas State –6.5 (–115). Low confidence.
2024 U.S. Presidential Election
We’re in a weird moment with our election bets. We trust Nate Silver’s model, but that means we also trust Nate Silver, and he’s indicated he thinks his model might slide more towards Kamala Harris over this next week as post-debate polling rolls in. Because of that, and because of where our lone vulnerability lies (most simply: a scenario where Harris wins Georgia but Trump wins Pennsylvania), we’re doing something we haven’t done yet: We’re placing two bets Silver’s model currently indicates are negative EV. Those are the Omaha (NE–2) and North Carolina bets below. Through that, we chip away at our vulnerability, load up on favorites, and keep things roughly balanced between red and blue within this mini-portfolio.
We’re starting with two longshots. The value’s too good to pass up. Uncertainty is high enough and Minnesota and New Hampshire are similar enough to Michigan and Wisconsin for us to add two more units on both of these.
Pick: Republican Candidate to win New Hampshire +600. Medium confidence.
Pick: Republican Candidate to win Minnesota +1000. Medium confidence.
On the other hand, uncertainty isn’t high enough for us to believe Harris has a realistic chance of winning Texas. If she does? She’ll be picking up 350 electoral votes anyway, and maybe winning Alaska, two things that would more than pay for this play given our previous bets. 16 units on Texas staying red.
Pick: Republican Candidate to win Texas –800. Medium confidence. x8
On the Democratic anchoring side, this is right in our wheelhouse: It’s got odds longer than –334, meaning it generates more than a 30% return if it hits. It’s far enough down the electoral snake that if it hits, we’ll have picked up enough from our Trump longshots (the popular vote, for example) to pay for it. Again, it’s listing at slightly negative EV, but Silver has indicated he expects a slight shift towards Harris, and suburbanite voters like the ones in Nebraska’s second district should theoretically be more affected by a debate than most, given what kinds of people watch debates. 26 units.
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win NE–2 –300. Medium confidence. x13
Finally, North Carolina. The EV is worse here, but we landed on it because it’s polling very close to Pennsylvania, and the market doesn’t seem to appreciate that. The market has Harris as a slight favorite overall, a larger favorite in Pennsylvania, and an underdog in North Carolina. We tend to think those are in the wrong order—that she should be a slightly larger favorite in the election than she is in Pennsylvania, and that North Carolina should be closer to Pennsylvania than this. Our portfolio still leans red on North Carolina, so this is an easy place to bet on that order being wrong, even if we wish the price was a little bit longer. Eight units.
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win North Carolina +120. Medium confidence. x4
