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 –2.0% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,735 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.6% across 2,293 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.
Active markets today: MLB moneylines and futures, plus a college football play.
Single-day MLB bets: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%, betting strictly moneylines. We’re 156–133–3 so far this year, down 5.98 units. Over the last three and a half weeks, we’ve been trying a different collection of approaches. So far, that effort is 44–31, up 6.82 units. We’re still open to changing those approaches, but for now, we’re locking in on picking Heat Index’s top two choices every day, with Heat Index being our pet metric measuring how hot and cold teams are. Together, Heat Index’s top two choices are 28–7 in our sample, up 13.77 units. They’ve been what’s working. The rest of our attempted approaches haven’t worked on the aggregate this year.
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.
Single-game college football bets: Our history here is mediocre, and true to form, we’re already 3–5 on the young season. We’re down 2.35 units heading into tonight.
Houston @ Cincinnati
Heat Index’s first choice, the Astros, has hit meaningfully better than the league average over the last three weeks. On the mound, though, is where things have gone really well. They’re second-best in baseball over that stretch by FIP–, and while Justin Verlander hasn’t been a huge part of that, he’s pitched well, and he’ll most likely only pitch a little more than half of today’s game. The bullpen is what’s dominating, and that’s what we expect to close things out this afternoon.
Pick: Houston to win –158. Low confidence. (Verlander and Aguiar must start.)
Seattle @ Oakland
Heat Index’s second choice, the A’s, aren’t particularly hot. Instead, it’s their opponent who’s especially cold. The Mariners’ bats have perked up a little lately (though they’re still below league average even in just the recent sample), but it’s the pitching Heat Index doesn’t like. This is odd for a few reasons. First, the Mariners are a strong pitching team. That’s their whole point. Second, while FIP doesn’t like what the Mariners have done the last few weeks, SIERA really likes it.
We use FIP for a reason, and that’s that we understand it better than SIERA and we value its predictive power. Still, a lot of smart people prefer SIERA. Thankfully, given our concern, this is probably a one-game preference for our metric. Tomorrow, a five-homer game gets eliminated from Seattle’s relevant sample.
Pick: Oakland to win +122. Low confidence. (Gilbert and Bido must start.)
World Series
Going back to the Astros: They might get a first-round bye. They’re only three games back of the Guardians and the pair will meet for three games to end the season. The Astros most likely need to make up two games before then (if Houston wins that series, they’ll own the tiebreaker), but their schedule is more favorable than that of the team they’re chasing.
The Astros are playing it very cautious with a lot of banged up hitters, and more likely than not, they don’t catch the Guards. But the markets are underestimating the chance it happens. We’ll make this both our futures plays today, with Houston an unprofitable scenario for the World Series portion of our portfolio.
Pick: Houston to win +900. Medium confidence. x2
Boston College @ Florida State
We don’t like this pick, but we’re bad at picking college football! We do know following Movelor has been a losing strategy in the early weeks of recent seasons, a lesson we were reminded about last night. So, we’ll trust our experience and fade our model here. Boston College, please keep it close for us.
Pick: Boston College +16.5 (–110). Low confidence.
