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 –2.1% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,642 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: Single-game MLB bets, MLB futures.
Single-day MLB bets: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%, betting strictly moneylines. We’re 114–103–3 so far this year, down 12.67 units. Another tough one last night. That Dylan Moore sinking lineout may or may not have made an appearance in my dreams. We’re going to make another pivot today, testing a few different options for approaches. If we can’t find something that works, we’ll shut these down for the rest of the season and try again next year.
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.
San Diego @ Pittsburgh
We’re trying three approaches today. The first is something we’re calling the “Heat Index.” What we’re defining as a team’s “Heat Index” is how much better or worse they’ve hit and pitched than the league average over a specified period of time. We’re using wRC+ for hitting and FIP– for pitching. Our time period is currently the stretch of games after the All-Star Break.
Today, the biggest Heat Index gap is between the Padres and the Pirates. The Pirates might be a respectable 8–9 since the break, but their hitting has been below league-average and they’ve pitched worse than all but two teams. The Padres, meanwhile, lead the league in pitching since the break and sit in fourth place in hitting.
The theory with all of these is that there’s something the market’s undervaluing. That’s the idea here. With the Heat Index approach, the specific theory is that the market is undervaluing the last month or so of results.
Pick: San Diego to win –114. Low confidence. (Vásquez and Ortiz must start.)
Baltimore @ Toronto
The second approach doesn’t have a name, but the concept is to find the game with odds closest to a tossup and to then bet the favorite. The idea behind this is that the market knows which team is likelier to win these games, but it isn’t confident enough in itself when the win probabilities are this close to 50%.
Pick: Baltimore to win –107. Low confidence. (Kremer and Gausman must start.)
Tampa Bay @ St. Louis
The third approach goes back to our success last year. One of the biggest differences between this year’s bets and last year’s is that last year, we bet a lot more underdogs. Basically, I think we’ve been too scared. Last year’s success came more in the first four months of the season than the last two, so it may be too late for this idea to work even if the thinking is right, but the approach is to go back to our strategy from April while limiting the selection to underdogs.
With all three approaches, we’re going to be tracking how they work and deciding pretty quickly whether to stick with them or abandon them. We don’t want to make too big of decisions on too small of samples, but most betting strategies are bad. If we find something that’s working, that is itself an upset, and we want to stick with that while eliminating peripheral waste.
Pick: Tampa Bay to win +105. Low confidence. (Baz and Gibson must start.)
World Series
The best value in the market remains on the Diamondbacks. There’d been good value, and they then swept a doubleheader, and markets are usually slow to react to doubleheader sweeps.
Two more units on Arizona forces a few teams into either becoming an unprofitable scenario (this is happening with Atlanta) or getting close to that (this is happening with Kansas City). There isn’t positive value available on the Braves, but we can get it on the Royals, so we will. We have a healthy amount of KC skepticism, but they’re in the mix for a first-round bye, Joe Ryan had an injury scare yesterday for the Twins, and the Royals’ remaining schedule—though difficult—is not as hard as that of the Guardians. It’s pretty clearcut why there’d be value on these guys. They’ve earned themselves a good situation.
Pick: Arizona to win +3500. Medium confidence.
Pick: Kansas City to win +4500. Medium confidence.
