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 7,309 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’re relying on Neil Paine’s NBA forecast as the basis for our playoff futures portfolio. We use our own Gelo model as the basis for our NHL playoff futures portfolio.
Active markets today: Major League Baseball moneylines, NBA and NHL futures. MLB futures are off for the weekend.
Single-day MLB bets: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%, betting strictly moneylines. We’re trying the same approach this year. We’re 19–18 so far, up 0.68 units. We had a bad start and we’ve been hot over the last week and a half or so. We’re hoping to keep the good run going.
NBA futures: We’ve only done these once before, but they went well. I believe we made a 7% return on our investment last year. We started on Tuesday with a 100-unit portfolio. Right now, we’re placing just one future per day when we can, although as we’ll get to in a moment, we can’t always do that.
NHL futures: We’ve had mixed results on these. In 2022, we lost 25% of our futures portfolio. Last year, we made a 33% return. We began yesterday with a 100-unit portfolio. Right now, we’re playing just one future per day.
NASCAR: We tried betting NASCAR in 2022 and it went absolutely horribly. We now only bet superspeedway races, and it’s always a long shot. We may get back into posting more regular NASCAR bets down the line, but for right now, we’re just trying to hit on a home run swing, given how often unexpected winners win at Daytona, Talladega, and now Atlanta.
Miami @ Chicago (NL)
Kyle Hendricks has really been struggling this year. Edward Cabrera was great in his season debut. Both teams used a lot of bullpen yesterday, but that should have a fairly balanced effect. This line being where it is probably comes from an overreaction to the Marlins’ 5–17 record and an undervaluing of Cabrera. We’ll take it.
Pick: Miami to win +113. Low confidence. (Cabrera and Hendricks must start.)
Eastern Conference (NBA)
We would really like to be in a position where we could profit if the Celtics and Nuggets were to meet in the Finals, but we also can’t pass up this value. The Knicks are up 1–0, Joel Embiid might not be 100%, and New York’s across the bracket from Boston. We have to grab this while it’s here.
Pick: New York to win +1200. Low confidence.
First Round: Denver vs. LA Lakers
This is actually positive value, even at this price, going off of an adjusted version of Paine’s models in which we attempted to combine the two. Paine’s stats-only model gives the Nuggets an 84.5% chance of winning this series. When we pull that chance more in alignment with his composite forecast’s conference championship and Finals probabilities, we see Denver at an 87.9% chance of winning the series, which gives these odds a +1% eROI. What does all this mean? The market is a little higher on the Nuggets in the long run than the short run. We don’t think this makes sense. We’re grabbing this price because of it. The result is that if we do get to a Celtics/Nuggets Finals, we’ll effectively have 1.19 units down on the Celtics to win 1.51, from the 17 units worth of bets we’ve placed so far.
Pick: Denver to win –650. Low confidence. x10
Western Conference (NHL)
In the hockey world, Gelo really likes this price on Winnipeg. The Avalanche are very good, and Gelo does respect that, but it sees Winnipeg as undervalued and unwisely written off. Ideally, they win Game 1 today and our portfolio’s off to a great start, with the Hurricanes taking care of business yesterday to our benefit.
Pick: Winnipeg to win +900. Low confidence.
Geico 500
The idea with our superspeedway bets is that everybody’s much closer to 1-in-40 than anyone believes, and so the big longshot bets can be highly valuable. Going off of that thought, we look for the biggest longshot we can find that’s a believable winner. Today, that brings us to Justin Haley.
Justin Haley won at Daytona once, back in 2019. He nearly won at Daytona two summers ago when NASCAR failed to flag the race for rain before rain spent Haley and the rest of the field spinning. (He still probably would have lost, because the race went on to resume, but there was a moment where he was racing for what many drivers thought could be the win, and he was leading.) He can do it as long as his car can hold up.
Can his car hold up? We think so. Haley’s running a full schedule this year for Rick Ware Racing, and while the 51 car doesn’t have some storied history, it’s gotten to the finish line in most races. I’d have to think more on whether the new generation of car in the Cup Series makes it even likelier for underdogs to win these races, but it’s at least believable that that’s the case as well. 80-to-1 isn’t the longest we’ve ever bet on one of these, but it’d be an amazing day, and the thrill of it’s enough for us to take this shot.
Pick: Justin Haley +8000. Low confidence.
