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 –2.5% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,837 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +1.6% across 2,337 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 context on each market:
MLB moneylines: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%. We’re 168–148–4 so far this year, down 12.79 units. It’s been a bad showing.
MLB futures: In four of the five years we’ve done these, we’ve profited, twice by large margins. We began this season with 750 units in our portfolio. We place two medium confidence bets most weekdays throughout the regular season. Now that division futures have begun paying out, we’re doing it on weekends as well.
Single-game NFL bets: We published these for the first time last year, and they went terribly. So far this year, we’re 5–4, up 0.69 units.
San Francisco @ Arizona
With the Tigers not playing today, our next “perceived hottest team we’re betting is overvalued because of that perceived heat” becomes the Diamondbacks. We must stress how badly our MLB moneylines have performed this year.
Pick: San Francisco to win +163. Low confidence. (Birdsong and Rodriguez must start.)
World Series
We do think the Diamondbacks might be overvalued tonight by the market, but we aren’t worried about them being overvalued on the World Series side. The opposite, in fact. They’re far from safely in the playoff field, but they’re still on the right side of the line with a little bit of cushion, and the number of games remaining keeps going down. The value here is astronomical if you trust FanGraphs’s Playoff Odds, and we do trust them.
The Yankees’ value is smaller, but we want to keep them a profitable scenario, and per those same probabilities, this is positive EV.
Pick: New York (AL) to win +450. Medium confidence.
Pick: Arizona to win +2500. Medium confidence.
Jacksonville at Buffalo
For Monday Night Football…we like the Bills. I know their defense is a little banged up, but they’ve played great so far, the Jaguars have struggled, and maybe we’re walking into a trap but we’d rather risk that than risk overthinking ourselves.
Pick: Buffalo –4 (–115). Low confidence.
