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 –2.0% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,663 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.6% across 2,293 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.
Active markets today: MLB futures and single-game MLB bets.
Single-day MLB bets: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%, betting strictly moneylines. We’re 127–111–3 so far this year, down 10.05 units. We’re trying three new approaches, something we started last Thursday. So far, that effort is 13–8, up 2.82 units. Inconclusive, but a nice little week.
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 place two medium confidence bets most weekdays until sometime in September when the scenarios become more specific.
Minnesota @ Texas
The first of our three new approaches has produced the best results over this small sample. Heat Index, our measure of the gap between teams’ recent performance, went 6–1 over the last week and returned 2.98 units.
Today, Heat Index points to the Twins, who’ve hit 15% better than league average and pitched 6% better than league average since the All-Star break.* That’s only sixth-best in the league, trailing the A’s and Orioles among teams who play today. But with Texas hitting 9% worse than average and pitching 16% worse, this game has the biggest gap.
*Once three weeks have elapsed since the trade deadline, we’re going to update our sample to that period rather than keeping the All-Star break as our bookend. We want the sample to be large enough to be somewhat meaningful but short enough to be recent.
Pick: Minnesota to win –111. Low confidence. (Ober and Bradford must start.)
Atlanta @ San Francisco
Our second approach, picking the smallest favorite, has also gone well. It’s 5–2, up 2.66 units. The Twins are the smallest favorite today, but we pick Heat Index first because it’s the one we’re most optimistic about, which in turn makes us want to test it the most rigorously. Long story short, we’re in on the Giants. We’ve bet the last two days of this series and gone 1–1, so while San Francisco’s just looking to not get swept, we’re after a personal series win.
Pick: San Francisco to win –113. Low confidence. (Fried and Webb must start.)
Oakland @ New York (NL)
We were close to shutting down our underdog approach, and we would have had Heat Index not saved us from betting the White Sox last night. This lane is 2–5, down 2.82 units over the seven days. One of those win’s—last night’s—came on our second choice of underdog. Still, it was a win, and so we’re going to continue the test for at least another two days.
Today, our method’s top underdog is the A’s. It would prefer a better option—Brent Rooker’s paternity leave hurts Oakland’s chances—but it likes how Mitch Spence has pitched this year, and it doesn’t like Jose Quintana’s results. In the absence of that better option, Oakland it is.
Pick: Oakland to win +156. Low confidence. (Spence and Quintana must start.)
World Series
Moving to futures, there’s still value available on the Guardians, who maintained their lead over the rest of the AL with last night’s win. The market’s slow to react here, and we’ll gladly take advantage of that pace. This makes the Guardians a profitable outcome for us in the World Series market.
Pick: Cleveland to win +1800. Medium confidence.
ALCS
Another newly profitable scenario for us is one where the Yankees win the pennant, although its profitable status may be short-lived. Given all our bets so far, we’d profit by 3.70 units in the ALCS market were the Yankees to win that series. They at least briefly join the Guardians, Astros, Twins, Royals, and Red Sox as our believable profitable options, which basically means our portfolio is fading the Orioles. (The Mariners are unprofitable for us, but only narrowly.)
Pick: New York (AL) to win +265. Medium confidence.
