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 –2.6% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,453 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.2% across 2,268 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’re relying on Neil Paine’s NBA forecast as the basis for our playoff futures portfolio. We use our own Gelo model as the basis for our NHL playoff futures portfolio.
Active markets today: Major League Baseball moneylines and futures. With both the NBA and NHL futures, we’re waiting at least one more game. Both series have gone our way so far, but we don’t have the leverage to hedge and we still prefer the value on the favorites, which is now very expensive to obtain.
Single-day MLB bets: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%, betting strictly moneylines. We’ve tried a similar approach this year. We’re 65–57 so far, down 1.38 units. It’s been a terrible performance, one in which every sign of progress has been met with a swift comedown. That said, we went 15–3 last week and are suddenly within shouting distance of a profit.
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.
Colorado @ Minnesota
This is a terribly boring play, but I think it’s our best option. Dakota Hudson hasn’t been much on the mound this year, and while Chris Paddack has also struggled, his baseline was better than Hudson’s, making his underperformance less a problem. The Twins aren’t playing their best lineup, but I wouldn’t be surprised if their resting starters are available to pinch hit. Ultimately, we just don’t see a lot we like in any other game. We’re doing the Douglas Adams flying thing—throwing ourselves at the ground and trying to miss.
Pick: Minnesota to win –238. Low confidence. (Hudson and Paddack must start.)
NLCS
This is a little nuts. 125-to-1 is a major longshot, and we’re doubling up on it. Really, we’re pentupling up on it. We already have two bets down on the Pirates in the NLCS market, plus one on Pittsburgh to win the World Series.
The value’s great, but at what point is enough enough?
This is that point, and is actually why we went with a second better-value NLCS play instead of a higher-upside World Series play. If we exhausted every other unit on our portfolio on non-Pirates bets and the Pirates did manage to win the World Series, we’d still make a 500-unit profit on the NLCS and World Series markets. That’s enough for us, especially since we probably won’t exhaust every other unit in our portfolio. No more Pirates unless something drastically changes. We have enough Pirates in the portfolio.
Pick: Pittsburgh to win +12500. Medium confidence. x2
