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 7,690 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.
Active markets today: MLB moneylines, this week’s election futures, our first college football action of the year, and a NASCAR superspeedway race. College football futures are tentatively scheduled for Tuesday.
Single-day MLB bets: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%, betting strictly moneylines. We’re 144–121–3 so far this year, down 6.05 units. Over the last 16 days, we’ve been trying a different collection of approaches. So far, that effort is 30–18, up 6.75 units. Do that again, and we’ll become profitable on the season sometime during the second week of September.
Election futures: These have been our best market historically, with a 17% overall ROI and significant profits both times we’ve done them—in 2020 and 2022. We started this year with a 1,000-unit portfolio and a plan to bet it as a series of 20 mini-portfolios, each leveraged against itself. We’re still approaching it in that manner, with most mini-portfolios placed and published on Saturdays. So far, we’re up 18.50 units. Those are going back into the bets.
This is our first college football play of the year. Historically, we’re mediocre on these. Going by track record, we’re not likely to turn a profit. Be warned.
Our NASCAR bets are terrible historically. They’re the source of most of our all-time deficit. We can’t quit superspeedways, though, so whenever they come up on the calendar, we take a shot.
Colorado @ New York (AL)
Heat Index has been our shining star since the pivot. It’s 14–2 and up 5.79 units. What is Heat Index? If you haven’t been here much lately, the approach is to measure how hot and cold every team is over a recent period of time (we use wRC+ and FIP–, and the current time period is three weeks) and to then bet on the hotter team in the game with the biggest gap.
Today, as it’s often been lately, that team is the Yankees. Partly because the Rockies are the coldest in the game.
Pick: New York (AL) to win –288. Low confidence. (Blalock and Warren must start.)
Arizona @ Boston
Heat Index has gone so well that yesterday, we debuted Heat Index 2. This is the exact same thing as Heat Index, but it goes for the hotter team in the game with the second-biggest gap. It’s 1–0 so far, but that is obviously not a meaningful sample.
We’re back on the Diamondbacks with this today. Nobody has hit better than them over the last three weeks of games, and only one team—the Marlins—has pitched worse than the Red Sox.
Pick: Arizona to win +104. Low confidence. (Gallen and Crawford must start.)
Milwaukee @ Oakland
Our underdogs are a more uncertain category. This uses an old approach of ours but limits the options to teams with even odds or longer. The approach is 6–10 and down 2.54 units, but the picks have a run differential of +4. That’s keeping us coming back.
We’ve always been fond of pitchers whose FIP and xERA are better than their ERA. Joe Boyle matches that description.
Pick: Oakland to win +115. Low confidence. (Rea and Boyle must start.)
Florida State vs. Georgia Tech
As we wrote elsewhere this morning, Florida State is probably somewhere around the 10th-best team in the country, and the narrative on the Seminoles has gotten pretty wacky. Overall, they’re a good team, and while we’ve seen the better team lose this game outright (Nebraska, 2022), that was one time. Georgia Tech is rising, but they’re not there yet.
Pick: Florida State –10.5 (–104). Low confidence.
Coke Zero Sugar 400 (but the Pepsi 400 in our hearts)
Daytona! We’re back on Ryan Preece here. We’re not convinced that the NextGen car makes it harder for lower-tier drivers like him to win on superspeedways, we don’t disagree with the prevailing thought that Fords are going to be strong tonight, and we don’t think Stewart–Haas is wholly noncompetitive. We wouldn’t call his chances much better than 35-to-1 in reality, but that’s still a ton of value if we’re right.
Pick: Ryan Preece to win +6600. Low confidence.
2024 U.S. Presidential Election
More books are opening more markets on these, and the opportunities are absurd. There’s arbitrage available on at least three states, plus the national popular vote.
Still, the returns on arbitrage are small, and we’re looking for something like a 30% return on our investments this cycle. Here’s what we’re in on this week:
We’ll start with some high-value underdogs. The calibrations on these are odd. Is it unlikely that Democrats win Alaska or that Republicans win New Hampshire? Yes, but it’s not this unlikely. We already have a little bit down on Alaska, so only two units there, but we’re putting a full eight units on New Hampshire. With both of these, we expect markets to correct to the point where we could hedge out of the positions down the line if we deem that necessary.
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win Alaska +1200. Medium confidence.
Pick: Republican Candidate to win New Hampshire +500. Medium confidence. x4
Next, a similar play, but with a twist: We already have some Democratic upside on New Mexico. So, this is in some ways a hedge. It’s a positive-value hedge, but it fulfills the same purpose: We go from having downside on the Republicans in New Mexico and upside on the Democrats to having upside on both. Two units.
Pick: Republican Candidate to win New Mexico +750. Medium confidence.
Next, our ballast. We’re going further in on the Republicans to hold Ohio and further in on the Democrats to hold Omaha’s congressional district. These help provide the safe upside around the poles which allows us to take shots on weirder scenarios like Alaska going blue.
Eight units on Ohio this week. Six units on Omaha.
Pick: Republican Candidate to win Ohio –850. Medium confidence. x4
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win NE–2 –265. Medium confidence. x3
Finally, a pair of bets closer to the middle. The value is tighter here, but our portfolio leans red in the middle and the market has shifted in that direction since RFK dropped out, something we believe creates opportunity for us to balance our own scales. We don’t know what impact RFK voters dispersing will have, but given how small a vote share he was commanding in projections already (projections that accounted for the usual dwindle in third-party support), we don’t expect the change to be as large as the market is indicating. People who bet on politics are much more “online” and in the weeds than voters are. Their natural consciousness sample overindexes for RFK.
Fourteen units on each of these.
Pick: Democratic Party to win election –110. Medium confidence. x7
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win Pennsylvania –115. Medium confidence. x7
