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 –1.5% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,201 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.2% 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 use kenpom heavily to make college basketball picks. We use our own college basketball model to evaluate college basketball futures, though at this point, that too is pretty much exclusively kenpom. We rely heavily on FanGraphs for all our MLB action.
Active markets today: Major League Baseball moneylines, college basketball futures.
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 3–7 so far, down 4.71 units. It’s been a bad first week and two days.
College basketball futures: We started these on Friday, February 23rd with 350 units in the portfolio. It’s been rough. A lot of near-misses, but every miss is a near-miss when you’re betting. We’re projecting a 23% loss on the portfolio, and that’s going off of kenpom’s projection for tomorrow night, one which leans more towards Purdue than the markets do.
Houston @ Texas
I think the market’s overreacting here to the probability that Ronel Blanco won’t throw a no-hitter. Of course he won’t throw another no-hitter. Of course he will regress. But he’s an acceptable rotation option for a reason, and while we don’t love the piece of this where Ryan Pressly threw a decent number of pitches yesterday, we’re still at that awkward place in the season where every game comes with a red flag (because starting pitchers’ sample sizes are so small that it’s hard to tell what’s trend and what was one good or bad day).
Pick: Houston to win +101. Low confidence. (Blanco and Dunning must start.)
NCAA Tournament
Unless there’s some shocking injury news tomorrow or a big change in the odds, this is our last bet of the college basketball season. 22 units on Purdue.
We think the value’s there. Purdue is beatable and has been beaten, but the same is true of UConn, even if UConn is a better team (especially right now). We do think UConn’s better. UConn should be favored. But UConn is favored by too much. So, we’ll put our futures portfolio in this position of either turning an 8% profit or taking a big, ugly 40% loss. Terrible leverage. But that’s where we’re at.
Pick: Purdue to win +235. Low confidence. x22
