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 7,675 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.
Active markets today: MLB futures and single-game MLB bets.
Single-day MLB bets: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%, betting strictly moneylines. We’re 135–115–3 so far this year, down 6.57 units. We’re trying three new approaches, something we started last Thursday. So far, that effort is 21–12, up 6.30 units. It’s still a small sample, but it’s been a nice week and a half.
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 in September when the scenarios become more specific.
Chicago (AL) @ San Francisco
Our first new approach, Heat Index, has been the best so far. It’s the one we believed in the most when we made the pivot, and it’s delivered. The concept is to calculate the gap between how hot or cold each team is and to then pick the hotter team in the game with the biggest gap. Often, that leads us to betting against the White Sox, and while we don’t love how one-dimensional and low-upside that makes this approach, we shouldn’t complain about a process that’s yielded a 9–2 record so far and a 3.46-unit return.
Pick: San Francisco to win –230. Low confidence. (Cannon and Harrison must start.)
Tampa Bay @ Oakland
Our second new approach, betting the smallest favorite, seems unlikely to work over the long term. But, there’s at least some theory behind it, and that’s that the market isn’t confident enough in itself when odds get close to 50/50. This approach is 7–4 so far and up 2.49 units.
Pick: Tampa Bay to win –121. Low confidence. (Bradley and Boyle must start.)
Boston @ Houston
The third goes back to our old approach, one which worked last year and didn’t work earlier this year. The one twist is that we’re only applying that approach to underdogs. Our theory with this one is that it wasn’t the approach that was the problem earlier this year, but rather our own caution when subjectivity entered the mix. So far, this process is 5–6 since the pivot, up 0.35 units with a run differential of +9. Today, it points towards the Red Sox.
Pick: Boston to win +130. Low confidence. (Houck and Kikuchi must start.)
AL East
For futures today, we’re doing the same thing twice. There’s positive value available again on the Yankees to win the division, and by betting it twice we return New York to being a profitable scenario for this portion of our portfolio. The division portion of our portfolio is very much reliant on underdogs, which always makes grabbing a favorite a little bit relieving.
Pick: New York (AL) to win –140. Medium confidence. x2
