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 –0.7% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 5,135 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. Movelor is heavily used in making college football picks. FPI is heavily used in making NFL picks, especially futures.
We have our MLB moneyline for today, and we have our MLB futures for today, and and we also have an NFL play. Here’s the context on each market.
Single-game MLB bets: On the season, we’re 94–63–4, we’re up 22.80 units, we’re up 14% (the average line on our winners has been –110). Yesterday, we clinched profitability over the regular season.
MLB futures: We began the season with 750 units in our MLB futures 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. This is circular, because we use FanGraphs probabilities to guide our picks, but if we use FanGraphs probabilities and include today’s plays, our mean expected return on the 750 units (based on what we’ve bet so far) is 96.66 units, or 12.9%.We’re going to get some units back from the NL East soon, so while we’re on track to spend more than 500 before the regular season ends, we’re not going to dip into the 250 just yet.
Single-game NFL bets: We are 0–4 on the year. Can we get to 0–5??
Tampa Bay @ Minnesota
We keep our single-game plays separate from our futures unless the conflict is so direct that it’s nonsensical. Just putting that out there before we get to our future in a moment.
Tyler Glasnow’s on fire, but Sonny Gray’s having a great year and the bullpen rest balance is about even. This looks like value on Minnesota.
Pick: Minnesota to win +103. Low confidence. (Glasnow and Gray must start.)
AL East
We’re in a weird spot with the Rays and the Orioles. Let’s explain.
Back in July, we got the Orioles at mistake odds to win the ALCS throughout the whole All-Star Break. We amassed enough of a position on them that should they win the American League pennant, we would make a 492-unit profit against the 124 units we’ve put down in that market. That is the only market, though, where we’ve put anything on Baltimore. We’ve never found good value on them in the AL East market or the World Series market.
We don’t have a lot on the Rays in the postseason. Were they to reach the World Series, we’d lose 39.30 units on the ALCS market based on bets already placed, and were they to win the World Series, we’d lose 101 units against the 138 placed so far there. They’re one of our worst postseason options among teams guaranteed to make the postseason, better than only the Dodgers. We have, though, had a little on them to win the AL East, and with nothing on the Orioles, that’s had us looking at a 31-unit swing. Not enough to make us want the Rays to take that top AL seed, but not nothing.
Since Wander Franco’s suspension, we’ve laid off the Rays even as FanGraphs has shown value on them. FanGraphs has had Franco returning sooner than we believe is likely, and from what we know of their model, we think they have Franco playing about half of October as well. This feels unrealistic, and so we’ve laid off even as the inflated probabilities shown there have said, “BET ON THE RAYS.”
Today, though, the odds are too long to ignore. Do the Rays have better than a 1-in-9 chance of closing the three-game (four in the loss column) gap on the O’s? With four games against the O’s remaining and only a slightly more difficult schedule the rest of the way? We think so. We trust FanGraphs enough on this, even with the Franco disagreement. The Rays would need to sweep Baltimore in that four-game set to take the tiebreaker, so they do need to actually make up five in the loss column, but we have that more than 11% likely to happen. This is a good, good baseball team, with or without Franco.
Do we want the Rays to win the East now? Ehh. I’m not so sure. It’s a 49-unit swing, so probably, yes, but we wouldn’t mind having all that leverage from Baltimore in October.
Pick: Tampa Bay to win +800. Medium confidence.
World Series
This is a lot simpler: The next-best eROI comes from the World Series favorites, and with absolutely nothing down on the Dodgers in the postseason, we need all the Atlanta upside we can get, for leverage purposes. We will take this.
Pick: Atlanta to win +300. Medium confidence.
Buffalo @ New York (AFC)
This seems like one to not overcomplicate, and it’s worth remembering that Aaron Rodgers hasn’t connected well with new receivers in Week 1 the last few years. That all said: We have never published a winning NFL bet against the spread. So, take this with the necessary grains of salt.
Pick: Buffalo –2 (–108). Low confidence.
