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 7,298 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 currently relying on Neil Paine’s NBA forecast as the basis for our playoff futures portfolio, but that’s subject to change.
Active markets today: Major League Baseball, both moneylines and futures, and the first steps in our NBA playoff futures portfolio.
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 14–14 so far, down 0.17 units. We had a bad start, but we’ve been hotter lately, going 9–4 over the last six days for a 6.01-unit gain.
MLB futures: We have a great history with these, though the last two years we’ve only made small profits. In both 2019 and 2021, I believe we recorded better than a 50% ROI. In 2020, we lost about 25% of our portfolio. We began this season with 750 units in our portfolio, with the intent being to spend 500 of those over the regular season and keep 250 in reserve for the postseason and/or hedging & arbitrage opportunities. We plan to place two medium-confidence bets most weekdays.
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 per day.
Anaheim @ Tampa Bay
The red flag we’re accepting here is that the Rays will have a few key bullpen guys unavailable. We don’t see a perfect option anywhere today, though, so in our effort to diversify, we’re taking it anyway. We like betting against West Coast teams in these early games. We’re concerned about Griffin Canning’s performance so far. Given we’re diversifying, we like taking these moderate favorites.
Pick: Tampa Bay to win –136. Low confidence. (Canning and Pepiot must start.)
Cleveland @ Boston
The red flag we’re accepting here is that Carlos Carrasco has been outperforming his expectations so far this month. It’s possible he’s better than projection systems think. We do, however, like the weather here. A cold and wet game with the potential for a delay favors the team doing a bullpen game.
Pick: Boston to win –105. Low confidence. (Carrasco and Bernardino must start.)
Arizona @ San Francisco
The red flag we’re accepting here is that Ryne Nelson has been solid so far. What makes us proceed anyway is that we’re skeptical Gabriel Moreno will be behind the plate. We don’t have any inside information, but given he’s been limited to pinch-hitting the last two days with his thumb contusion, we see the possibility that he might be stuck in that role for a little while more. The tough thing is that most of his value comes as a catcher. He’s a good hitter, but not DH good. Maybe he’s back tonight, but the question is enough to balance out our worry that Nelson really is better than his projections.
Pick: San Francisco to win –139. Low confidence. (Nelson and Webb must start.)
NLCS
Are the Dodgers in trouble? We don’t need to go that far to find value here. The Dodgers are only three games above .500, and while their roster rocks, it’s not at the top of the league on paper in either run scoring or run prevention, by which I mean the Dodgers aren’t projected to be entirely titanic. Add in that teams will only need something like 86 or 87 wins to make the playoffs, and these aren’t much of a reach. The value isn’t amazing, but we’re still prioritizing breadth this early in the season.
Pick: Arizona to win +1800. Medium confidence.
Pick: San Francisco to win +3000. Medium confidence.
Western Conference
Pivoting to the NBA, we’re going in on the T-Wolves today. With Jimmy Butler’s injury, the Celtics’ odds have shortened a little too much for our tastes, and whether we hedge out of the Play-In future or not (we have a bet down at +100 on a 9 or a 10-seed to make the playoff field, meaning we want either of the Bulls or Kings to win tomorrow), we don’t have to make that decision today. Obviously, we don’t like betting against the Nuggets, but this is a portfolio, and we do think the value’s there on Minnesota if it’s available on anybody.
One note with these: We don’t think Nate Silver’s going to bring RAPTOR back these playoffs. He posted yesterday about his election model and made no mention of the NBA there despite bringing his March Madness model back up. So, I think we’re riding with Neil Paine’s work. We really liked RAPTOR, but this is a solid alternative, and probably better than anything we’d build on our own, even if we gave it the full 50 to 100 hours it would take to give it our best effort.
Pick: Minnesota to win +900. Low confidence.
