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 –0.8% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 5,044 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of +3.1% across 1,617 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us).
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 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. FanGraphs is heavily used in making MLB picks.
Two markets today. We’re still unsure if we’ll do MLB futures tomorrow, but we’re tentatively planning on it.
Single-game MLB bets: On the season, we’re 54–40–1, we’re up 8.98 units, we’re up 9% (the average line on our winners has been –110). April was great, May was bad, June was good. We’re off to a good start in July.
St. Louis @ Miami
The Marlins are the most undervalued team in futures markets right now, and yet we keep seeing opportunities to bet against them in single games. I don’t know what’s going on here, but if you want to bet on it sticking around, you could probably try to find some long-term arbitrage potential. In the short term, we’re amenable to the proposition that the Cardinals are undervalued. It doesn’t fully track with what we’re seeing in futures—the NL Central as a whole looks rather overvalued, yet the Cardinals don’t pop as a particularly encouraging option—but it’s possible what’s really happening is that futures bettors are banking on the Cardinals figuring out whatever it is that ails them and moneyline bettors are following recent (three months now) trends. It’s also possible the two markets are just really independent of one another. Whatever the case, we like MLB TV’s mic’d up star to get the win tonight in Florida.
Pick: St. Louis to win +117. Low confidence. (Mikolas and Garrett must start.)
NLCS
Even at this short price, there’s value on Atlanta. Ideally, given how big our positions are on so many potential Wild Cards (Diamondbacks, Giants, Marlins), we’ll get an NLDS matchup between Atlanta and one of our high-upside plays, producing a lot of leverage. That’s a long way off, but we’re far enough into the season that our situation has taken most of its shape.
Pick: Atlanta to win +170. Medium confidence.
World Series
More on the Phillies, too. Last week’s wasn’t enough to make them a profitable scenario for us, so we’re back today.
Pick: Philadelphia to win +2800. Medium confidence.
