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 –2.2% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,818 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.2% across 2,323 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 college football, and MLB futures. Here’s the context on each market:
MLB moneylines: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%. We’re 168–146–4 so far this year, down 10.79 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 college football bets: Our history here is mediocre, and true to form, we’re 7–11 so far this year. We’re down 4.78 units heading into today.
Detroit @ Baltimore
We finally got that Mets loss yesterday in our “bet against the perceived hottest team” effort. That would have meant moving on to betting against the Tigers, but then the Tigers lost as well. Are the Tigers still viewed as hotter than the Mets?
Ultimately, this is a subjective and arbitrary judgment call. But our perception is that there’s probably more of an assumption from the hot/cold perspective that the Tigers will get back to winning today than there is about the Mets. Obviously, the market doesn’t expect the Tigers to win—they’re an underdog—but we’re aiming for that specific hot/cold thought process here. We’re probably chasing ghosts.
Pick: Baltimore to win –133. Low confidence. (Olson and Povich must start.)
World Series
I don’t know what’s happening with these odds. The Diamondbacks won, the Mets and Braves lost, and the Diamondbacks number lengthened from 24-to-1 to 30-to-1. Maybe I missed an injury, but it’s weird. I guess you could say that because they’re now likelier to get the 5-seed again, they have a tougher path, but that seems like a stretch. I think someone made a mistake, and with the D-Backs already our favorite team to bet these days in futures markets, we’ll take what the defense gives us, even if it ends up only being leverage.
Pick: Arizona to win +3000. Medium confidence.
NLCS
This number’s a little more reasonable, but the value’s still good. We’re loaded up on Arizona and Detroit right now, with some major upside on San Diego and the Mets as well.
Pick: Arizona to win +1100. Medium confidence.
Vanderbilt @ Missouri
As we said above, our college football picks stink, especially this early in the year. We do like Mizzou to bounce back from a somewhat underwhelming showing last week, and we’re not sold on Vanderbilt bouncing back from their loss to Georgia State.
Pick: Missouri –18 (–110). Low confidence.
Miami @ USF
I’m not sold on Miami yet. I get the concept, but they’re a team we haven’t seen hold it together cohesively over a season lately. I think analysts sometimes outsmart themselves by equating the whole to the sum of the parts. The whole isn’t always as good.
I might be off on that take, but this should be a reasonable test. USF isn’t a great team or anything, but they’re a solid mid-major, and while Alabama made a lot of mistakes against them, I don’t think it’s meaningless that Alabama struggled in Tampa and dominated in Madison.
Pick: USF +17 (–117). Low confidence.
