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 7,684 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 139–120–3 so far this year, down 9.11 units. Over the last two weeks, we’ve been trying a different collection of approaches. So far, that effort is 25–17, up 3.76 units. If we can keep gaining at that pace, we’ll finish the regular season profitable on baseball, but that’s a lot easier said than done.
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.
Cleveland @ New York (AL)
Heat Index has done us well so far, and after switching yesterday from post-All-Star break to last-three-weeks, we got up to 12–2 using it overall. It’s up 4.90 units, for a 35% return.
Today, it likes the Yankees. We’ve talked about this in futures betting before, but something lost in the Yankees discourse is how well they’ve been playing. Over the last three weeks, they’re the second-best hitting team in baseball by wRC+ and the second-best pitching team by FIP–. Some of that is Cole, whose average start since the exhaustion incident has seen him go 5.2 innings, strike out seven, walk one, and allow one run.
Pick: New York (AL) to win –174. Low confidence. (Williams and Cole must start.)
Philadelphia @ Atlanta
Smallest Favorite won last night, breaking a little losing streak and improving to 8–6 overall, up 1.44 units. We’re still close to shutting it down—we doubt the market is inefficient enough around coin toss games to really allow us a positive return—but we’re waiting to see how Heat Index’s second choices do. Smallest Favorite seems likeliest to work over small samples. We’ve been gambling on coin flips.
That all said, the case for the Braves tonight is that they’re probably a little undervalued, again because the narrative is obscuring their remaining ability. Schwellenbach was not a small deal of a prospect, and he hasn’t pitched like one.
Pick: Atlanta to win –109. Low confidence. (Sánchez and Schwellenbach must start.)
Milwaukee @ St. Louis
Our process points to a lot of valuable underdogs today. Five of them, in fact, unless I’m missing a weather pattern somewhere. The one it likes most is the Cardinals, who should have Ryan Helsley available while the Brewers lack Devin Williams following two straight nights of work, the second of which featured the closer completely losing the ability to hit the strike zone.
Pick: St. Louis to win +111. Low confidence. (Peralta and Mikolas must start.)
ALCS
Would a Red Sox/Yankees ALCS still play? I tend to think so, though of course the stakes are lower than they were twenty years ago. We just might get it, with the Red Sox still well within reach of the Twins and Royals in the Wild Card picture.
There’s value on both these teams. Boston’s the big value, while New York’s a play we’re making to keep them a profitable option for our portfolio.
Pick: New York (AL) to win +270. Medium confidence.
Pick: Boston to win +3000. Medium confidence.
