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 7,943 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2% across 2,411 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 are MLB futures, single-game college football, and election futures.
The context on each market:
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 placed two medium confidence bets most weekdays throughout the regular season, as usual, then pivoted to placing a more variable number throughout the playoffs, as usual. We’re currently big fans of the Tigers and Mets, and we do not want the Dodgers to win it all.
Single-game college football bets – Our history here is mediocre, and we’re off to a really bad start this season, with a 15–21 record so far. We’re down 7.46 units heading into today.
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 mini-portfolios published once a week (we’re caught back up again). So far, we’re up 18.50 units. Those are going back into the bets. We’re going to do a second election portfolio down the line, a standalone portfolio, and possibly a third of the same sort, but this first portfolio is a continuation of the process we started back around the Fourth of July.
NLCS
Tough one for our futures portfolio last night, but there’s still a lot of upside left out there for us, and we’re still projecting an average 9% return.
This value is narrowly positive, but the Dodgers are our lone serious vulnerability, and the value is positive. Taking positive-value bets to reduce our liabilities is how this portfolio operates.
Scenario by scenario, then, here are the new numbers, with plenty of Dodger downside still out there and big leverage on Tigers/Guardians today:
| DET/CLE | ALCS | NLCS | World Series | Final Net |
| DET | DET | NYM | DET | 1068.49 |
| DET | DET | LAD | DET | 1050.16 |
| DET | DET | NYM | NYM | 944.49 |
| DET | DET | LAD | LAD | 448.16 |
| CLE | CLE | NYM | CLE | 271.80 |
| CLE | CLE | NYM | NYM | 259.80 |
| CLE | CLE | LAD | CLE | 253.47 |
| CLE | NYY | NYM | NYM | 203.40 |
| DET | NYY | NYM | NYM | 191.59 |
| CLE | NYY | NYM | NYY | -67.20 |
| DET | NYY | NYM | NYY | -79.01 |
| CLE | NYY | LAD | NYY | -85.53 |
| DET | NYY | LAD | NYY | -97.34 |
| CLE | CLE | LAD | LAD | -236.53 |
| CLE | NYY | LAD | LAD | -292.93 |
| DET | NYY | LAD | LAD | -304.74 |
Pick: Los Angeles to win –180. Medium confidence. x6
Washington @ Iowa
We’ve told ourselves we can’t side with Movelor, at least for a little while. That moratorium has earned us two straight wins, which is obviously a very small sample. What we’re doing, then, is looking for games we like which Movelor doesn’t. There’s still a ton of subjectivity involved, but we’ll share our reasoning.
With this one, we’re not so worried about teams traveling long distances as we are about a kickoff at 9 AM on these Washington players’ body clocks. Jedd Fisch is a very good coach in the macro sense—he runs a great program and motivates his team well and all that—but he’s shown signs of a lack of preparation at times. Eventually, we think Big Ten teams will all figure out time zones to the degree where they have no trouble with this sort of thing. But we aren’t sure the Huskies are there yet.
Pick: Iowa –2.5 (–115). Low confidence.
Cal @ Pitt
This is a big letdown game for Cal after that emotional loss on Saturday night. Eli Holstein’s a gamer, Pitt’s deservedly fired up about their undefeated start, and while we’d prefer this line to have stayed at 3.0, that’s more a concern in the NFL than it is in the college game.
Pick: Pitt –3.5 (+100). Low confidence.
Purdue @ Illinois
This is a huge number, but we’re committed to betting against Purdue until they’re competitive against the spread. Maybe this is the week that happens. We’re not sure the market’s found bottom on them yet, though.
Pick: Illinois –23 (–110). Low confidence.
2024 U.S. Presidential Election
Nothing too new here. Trump’s still undervalued in New Hampshire, Harris is still undervalued in Virginia, and we can mostly balance those out, especially given where our other upside lies. One new thing is that there’s value on Harris to win the popular vote for the first time this cycle. We have a lot of upside on Trump pulling off the popular vote upset, so this helps balance it a little.
Six units on NH. 28 on VA. 20 on the popular vote.
Pick: Republican Candidate to win New Hampshire +600. Medium confidence. x3
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win Popular Vote –290. Medium confidence. x10
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win Virginia –600. Medium confidence. x14
