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 -4.8% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 3,613 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of 0.8% across 949 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us). Our ETA to get the overall number back profitable is currently November 5th, the date of a potential World Series Game 7.
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 have a gambling problem, get help.
Lines for these come from the Vegas consensus or the closest approximation available at the time picks are written, unless otherwise noted. For futures bets (in both sports and politics) and motorsports bets, odds are taken from the better option between Bovada and BetOnline as our best approximation of the Vegas consensus, which isn’t currently/accurately available online. FanGraphs is heavily used in making MLB picks. FiveThirtyEight’s SPI is heavily used in making soccer picks. ESPN’s FPI is heavily used in making NFL picks.
MLB futures today, plus F1 and NASCAR. For unit context, on the MLB futures: We started the season with 1,040 units available for futures and hedges against those futures. Entering today, we’ve netted 10.74 units of profit, and we have 398.74 units in the bankroll, with 676 units pending.
World Series
This is the only positive value we’re seeing on the markets, and with one win to go, this is still a space-building bet, by which we mean this: We’re going to need to start betting on the Astros at some point, to maximize our floor, but we want to have the highest upside possible before we start doing that, and with the Phillies not assured yet of winning the NLCS, these are still higher than their ultimate World Series odds will be. So, the current plan is to wait for each LCS to wrap up before we start the hedging. Here’s the current scenario table:
| Winner | Loser | P/L |
| Phillies | Yankees | 496.84 |
| Padres | Yankees | 464.74 |
| Phillies | Astros | 344.14 |
| Padres | Astros | 312.04 |
| Astros | Padres | -11.66 |
| Astros | Phillies | -51.66 |
| Yankees | Padres | -52.46 |
| Yankees | Phillies | -92.46 |
Pick: Philadelphia to win +180. Medium confidence.
Pick: Philadelphia to win +180. Medium confidence.
Formula 1: United States Grand Prix
To echo a recent theme: We aren’t betting against Max Verstappen in Formula 1 right now.
Pick: Max Verstappen to win -220. Low confidence.
NASCAR Cup Series at Homestead-Miami
I’m surprised Christopher Bell isn’t enjoying better odds here. He’s more in need of a win than anyone else on the track, and lately he’s had the car for it. Our track record on NASCAR is terrible (yet another model we need to get built, so we have some coherency to our approach), but we’re putting our unit here this week.
Pick: Christopher Bell to win +900. Low confidence.
