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 –2.1% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,797 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.2% across 2,311 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. For college football bets, we primarily use our own model. For NFL bets, we lean on ESPN’s FPI.
Active markets today: Single-game MLB, single-game NFL, and MLB futures. Here’s the history on each and how we approach them:
MLB moneylines: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%. We’re 167–143–4 so far this year, down 9.87 units. In early August, we pivoted to a different set of systems. We’re 55–41–1 since the pivot, up 2.93 units. The biggest driver of that success has been Heat Index, our pet metric which gauges the gap between how hot different teams are. Together, various combinations of Heat Index’s first, second, and third picks have gone 40–22–1, generating a 6.11-unit return. We’ve changed up Heat Index’s definition of recency, but it always measures hot and cold based off of wRC+ and FIP–. Right now, we’re using its second choice of each day’s games, and we’re using a two-week sample.
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 later this month when the scenarios become more specific.
Single-game NFL bets: We published these for the first time last year, and they went terribly. So far this year, we’re 4–2, up 1.78 units.
Minnesota @ Cleveland
Pablo López is probably still undervalued, but the Guardians have been the better team lately, and that’s what we’re looking at these days. We haven’t had an underdog in a little while.
Pick: Cleveland to win +108. Low confidence. (López and Boyd must start.)
World Series
I’m curious how much this pair’s odds are moving based on whether they’re pointed towards playing the Dodgers or Phillies in the NLDS. The conventional wisdom is that the Phillies will be the tougher opponent, based on their healthier rotation and notorious home crowd advantage. The Phillies didn’t win last year’s NLCS, though, and I don’t know that Yoshinobu Yamamoto is the Game 1 starter you want to face coming out of the Wild Card Series.
Regardless, we keep stocking up on what’s most likely the NL’s 4/5 series winner. If both these teams can hold onto a playoff position, we’re going to enter October in a solid place.
Pick: San Diego to win +1200. Medium confidence.
Pick: Arizona to win +2500. Medium confidence.
Atlanta @ Philadelphia
We’re sticking with our approach, where as long as home field advantage is worth 1.5 points, FPI favors the Eagles tonight.
Pick: Philadelphia –5.5 (–110). Low confidence.
