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 –1.9% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,745 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 moneylines, MLB futures, single-game college football, single-game NFL, and our weekly 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 162–135–3 so far this year, down 4.14 units. Four weeks ago, we pivoted to a different set of systems. We’re 50–33 since the pivot, up 8.66 units. The biggest driver of that success has been Heat Index, our pet metric which gauges the gap between how hot different teams is. Together, Heat Index’s top two choices are 34–9 and up 15.61 units. Heat Index’s second choice is more successful than its first, but the sample is small on both and smaller on the second.
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 4–5 on the young season. We’re down 1.44 units heading into tonight.
Single-game NFL bets: We published these for the first time last year, and they went terribly. We did win last night, though, so we’re 1–0 this year, up 0.88 units.
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.
Philadelphia @ Miami
The odds here aren’t pretty, but the Marlins are the coldest team in baseball, taking that crown from the Rockies as last night enters our three-week sample and August 15th exits. Over the last 21 days, the Marlins have pitched 36% worse than the season-long MLB average, as measured by FIP. Tonight, their bigger problem might be who’s pitching for the opponent.
Pick: Philadelphia to win –222. Low confidence. (Wheeler and Cabrera must start.)
Colorado @ Milwaukee
The Rockies aren’t as cold as the Marlins, but they’re still cold. Even with a recent homestand against Miami that went rather well offensively, the Rockies are hitting 21% worse than league-average these last three weeks. The Brewers, meanwhile, just keep winning.
Pick: Milwaukee to win –225. Low confidence. (Feltner and Montas must start.)
World Series
The Padres are still looking like the NL 4-seed, staring down a Wild Card Series against the Diamondbacks and an NLDS against either the Phillies or the Dodgers. That’s a tough, tough path. But 14-to-1 is long odds for a roster which, on paper, rivals that of the Dodgers and might be better than that of the Phillies. The results bear this out. Since May 12th—this is the period which gives us a 100-game Padres sample—only Arizona and Houston have won more games than the Pads. It’s a tough road, but this is a good team. We’re getting them at a good price.
Pick: San Diego to win +1400. Medium confidence.
ALCS
This is also a good price, and if the Tigers can erase an effective 5.5-game deficit in the Wild Card picture (they’ve already lost the tiebreaker to the Royals), it’ll give us massive leverage on the AL side of the bracket. Will that happen? Probably not. FanGraphs has it around a 1-in-13 probability. That’s very unlikely, and that’s only to make the playoffs—this bet is on the Tigers to win the ALCS, and what leverage it generates comes from that possibility. Still, the scenario is possible enough for us to take the shot. The upside is too good to pass up, especially with few strong options elsewhere.
Pick: Detroit to win +25000. Medium confidence.
Duke @ Northwestern
Movelor is pretty much in agreement with the markets today (although I haven’t seen an Indiana/WIU line), so we can neither follow it nor fade it unless we want to follow a 4-point gap. Instead, we’re going to try to logic this one out.
What we’re betting on here is that markets are undervaluing continuity. Manny Diaz might do well at Duke, but he’s still new there. David Braun is less new at Northwestern. In a funky stadium with a lot of wind, we think the Wildcats might have an added home-field advantage, too, in the form of a familiarity bonus. That’s the thinking.
Pick: Northwestern –1.5 (–110). Low confidence.
Green Bay vs. Philadelphia
We’re rolling with the Packers tonight, for the simple reason that we don’t think they’re 2.5 points worse than the Eagles. We do think the Eagles are probably binarily good or bad this year—we wrote about that with yesterday’s NFL futures—and we do have doubts about the Packers we’ve expressed this offseason, namely that Jordan Love had a few very good games and the rest of last season was rough. But 2.5 points is a lot of points even in the good Eagles scenarios.
Pick: Green Bay +2.5 (–110). Low confidence.
2024 U.S. Presidential Election
If you’re up to date on the election-modeling discourse, you know that Nate Silver’s model—the one we’re relying on—is still deflating Kamala Harris’s chances relative to where the polls have her. The reason for this is that most of those polls were conducted immediately in the wake of the Democratic Party’s convention, and historically, polls recede following a candidate’s convention. It’s possible Silver’s model is being unduly harsh. This cycle has been abnormal in its timing. When Harris entered the race, the wave of Harris media coverage was larger than it was during the convention itself. We’re aware Silver’s model may be presently underrating Harris a little bit.
Still, the expected values available in betting markets right now are massive. Some of this is how inefficient election futures markets always are (there is a ton of arbitrage available right now if you’re willing to take 5% returns in exchange for a few hours of work), but it goes beyond that. Silver’s model might be underrating Harris right now, but betting markets seem to be dramatically overrating her. The result is that we’re only seeing value available on Trump with basically only one exception. Most of today’s mini-portfolio is bets on Trump in swing states. Some of it—Pennsylvania and Florida—is in swing states with arbitrage effects.
The only spot we’re finding value on Harris (we always try to balance our mini-portfolios to some extent) is in Alaska. Alaska’s small, its population changes rapidly, its population skews young, and it’s not polled that often. The uncertainty in Alaska is probably higher than markets believe. That makes it valuable for the underdog.
6 units on Harris in Alaska. 4, 14, 8, and 22 respectively on Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Florida. The impact on our overall portfolio is that in the median scenario, we’re set to profit, and in the fringe scenarios, we’re set to profit by a lot. The one risky scenario for us is if Harris wins the election but only carries one of Georgia or Pennsylvania, a scenario that gets especially bad if Harris takes one or both of Arizona and North Carolina. Thankfully, we have a lot of time before Election Day to zero in on this specific scenario, and we could probably hedge out of the risk if it came to that. More likely, the market will swing around enough to give us opportunities to do it in simple ways.
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win Alaska +1200. Medium confidence. x3
Pick: Republican Candidate to win Michigan +165. Medium confidence. x2
Pick: Republican Candidate to win Pennsylvania +110. Medium confidence. x7
Pick: Republican Candidate to win Arizona –125. Medium confidence. x4
Pick: Republican Candidate to win Florida –500. Medium confidence. x11
