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 -5% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 3,381 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of 0.3% across 762 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us). Our ETA for having the overall number back profitable is currently November 7th, the likeliest date of a World Series Game 7 and the eve of both college basketball season and Election Day.
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.
Just MLB futures Monday through Friday these days. For context on these: We started the season with 520 units in our MLB futures portfolio, with another 520 in reserve in case we need them for hedging down the line.
ALCS
We’ve got no regular season games until Thursday, and even Thursday features only three games of postseason relevance. That gives us some space to zoom out this week, and we’re going to start by hitting where the value’s the highest, which is on the Blue Jays.
The Blue Jays’ odds moved hard after they fired Charlie Montoyo, implying the market thinks that the very talented team that was underperforming will…be worse because it fired its manager? I can see the argument that this won’t help anything, but there’s no real wisdom behind an implication the team will be worse off for the move.
Pick: Toronto to win +1200. Medium confidence.
World Series
Ditto everything above. Plus, we’d like to start building some big upside peaks. Having a variety of profitable options is good, but we’d like a few paths to massive upside, and the Blue Jays seem as good a choice for that as anyone.
Pick: Toronto to win +2500. Medium confidence.
