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% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,584 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2% across 2,268 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 and election futures. MLB futures are off for the weekend, as usual. Here’s the context on each market.
Single-day MLB bets: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%, betting strictly moneylines. We’ve tried a similar approach this year. We’re 100–85–2 so far, down 4.52 units. We’ve mostly been treading water lately, but we haven’t been able to sustain making up significant ground.
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’re putting 1,000 units into our portfolio this year, but we’re betting it as a series of 20 mini-portfolios, each leveraged against itself. For the most part, we’re putting together one mini-portfolio each Saturday.
New York (NL) @ Miami
Luis Severino got bit by the home run bug two starts ago, but it was isolated enough that we aren’t worried about a precipitous decline. Roddery Muñoz flashes good starts here and there, but they’re rare. We’ll take the Mets to get Miami back.
Pick: New York (NL) to win –155. Low confidence. (Severino and Muñoz must start.)
2024 United States Presidential Election
We’ll start with the most noteworthy of these bets, because we need to provide context on it. Two weeks ago, we bet 18 units at –180 odds on the Democratic nominee being someone other than Joe Biden. Last week, we bet 18 units at +125 odds on Joe Biden dropping out before the Democratic convention. That left us with 36 units of downside and 32.5 units of upside.
That’s a big swing, even in a thousand-unit portfolio. It’s especially big when it’s the only piece of these bets grounded solely in our own opinion, as opposed to being deemed positive-value by Nate Silver’s model. This isn’t the worst thing to do. Silver himself has cast doubt on his model’s present accuracy, given it treats Biden as a normal candidate and assumes Biden is the candidate. But doing it makes us uncomfortable.
Given that, and given Polymarket currently implies +270 on Biden becoming the Democratic nominee is only narrowly a negative-EV bet, we’re going to hedge against our position, betting 14 units on Biden to indeed become the nominee. Now, instead of 32.5-unit upside, we have 18.5-unit upside. Our downside, though, is almost nonexistent. Either we make 18.5 units in August or we make 1.8 units in August, with the only caveat being that if Biden enters the convention still trying to hold onto the nomination and manages to lose it, we will be in a pickle. In that scenario, we stand to lose 22 units. That scenario is possible, but it seems unlikely enough for us to not worry about it. The likeliest outcome is that Biden drops out. The second-likeliest outcome is that Biden and his team continue to strong-arm the party. The probability of failure occurring at the specific moment of the convention seems so, so low. There’s too much face to save.
Pick: Joe Biden to be Democratic nominee +270. Medium confidence. x7
Moving on to the normal stuff: We’re counting Biden staying in the race as a positive outcome for the Republican candidate. Our other two positive bets for R’s come at a high level today. Eight units on each of these, with Silver’s model still implying positive value at these prices. We’re a little worried about how the race will change if (or when) the Democratic nominee changes, but the point of these mini-portfolios is that they’re each internally leveraged. A nominee change would hurt these bets, but it would help those further down today’s list. That’s the point of the internal hedging. Eight units on each.
Pick: Republican Candidate to win election –215. Medium confidence. x4
Pick: Republican Candidate to win popular vote –110. Medium confidence. x4
Moving to the bets on positive outcomes for the Democratic candidate: These two are also of the “hedging” variety, but Silver’s model does show them as positive-EV. We have bets already on the Republican Candidate to win each of these groups of electoral votes, and while neither of those bets pays out a full two units, this still puts us in a very low-downside place in Nevada and Omaha. Eight units on Omaha. Two on Nevada.
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win Nebraska’s Second Congressional District –135. Medium confidence. x4
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win Nevada +290. Medium confidence.
For our last two, we’re going with one relatively safe Democratic state and one big longshot. New Mexico could plausibly go red—it has a lot of working-class Hispanic males, and Trump has made gains in that demographic—but this is a great price for a state which favored Biden over Trump by nearly eleven points in 2020. Eight units.
Alaska, meanwhile, is anomalistic enough to be worth a shot. We still think markets are underrating the prospects of a Democratic landslide win. Donald Trump, like Joe Biden, is a very old man, and if 1) Silver’s model is indicating this as positive-EV already, while 2) a different Democratic candidate should be expected to perform better than Biden, the value’s there. Two units.
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win New Mexico –300. Medium confidence. x4
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win Alaska +850. Medium confidence.
