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 7,929 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +1% across 2,400 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. For college football bets, we primarily use our own model. For NFL bets, we lean on ESPN’s FPI.
Active markets today are MLB futures, single-game college football, and single-game NFL.
The context on each market:
MLB futures – In four of the five years we’ve done these, we’ve profited, twice by large margins. We began this season with 750 units in our portfolio. We placed two medium confidence bets most weekdays throughout the regular season, as usual, then pivoted to placing a more variable number throughout the playoffs, as usual. We’re currently big fans of the Tigers, Padres, and Mets, and we do not want the Dodgers to win it all.
Single-game college football bets – Our history here is mediocre, and we’re off to a really bad start this season, with a 13–21 record so far. We’re down 9.28 units heading into tonight.
Single-game NFL bets – We published these for the first time last year, and they went terribly. So far this year, though, we’re 10–6 and up 3.34 units.
World Series
There’s no value available on the Dodgers today, or at least we’re not willing to call it value. There are a lot of mixed numbers out there about tomorrow’s Game 5 in that series.
Instead, we’re going to take the very clear value available on the Guardians. For as fun as the Tigers are, and possibly because of that fun, they’re a little overvalued, which is combining with Yankees excitement to leave the Guards a convenient sleeper. We’d still prefer Detroit win—we make a 754-unit profit on the ALCS if the Tigers win it—but this gets the Guards right there with the Mets as one of our favorite World Series options.
Our portfolio is down 38.21 units so far, but our projected final return based on FanGraphs Playoff Odds is a 289.25-unit profit. That’s probably a little optimistic—the Playoff Odds are viewing the Padres/Dodgers Game 5 as an average pitching matchup, when in reality it favors LA—but it’s in the ballpark of where we’re at. Here’s how much we stand to gain or lose from here on each remaining team, rounded to the nearest unit and limited to series in which the given team can play.
| Team | Remaining Upside/Downside |
| Mets | 240 |
| Tigers | 1100 |
| Yankees | -42 |
| Padres | 581 |
| Dodgers | -252 |
| Guardians | 246 |
| Royals | 24 |
Once we’re down to 8 or 16 or 32 scenarios, we’ll start listing by specific scenario.
Pick: Cleveland to win +2200. Medium confidence. x5
Middle Tennessee @ Louisiana Tech
After following Movelor into the woodchipper a whole bunch these last seven days, we’re committed to fading it tonight. Is Movelor the problem? Probably not, or at least not to the degree where we should expect to be profitable against the spread by fading Movelor and fading Movelor alone. A better key, we think, is looking for games where Movelor should be wrong, and given its poor grasp on Conference USA, how close this spread is, and how much offseason turnover there was on both these rosters, this is the one where we’re most inclined to doubt our computer.
Pick: Louisiana Tech –4.5 (–110). Low confidence.
San Francisco @ Seattle
With this one, what you make of home-field advantage matters a lot. If it’s 2.0 points or less, FPI favors the Niners. If it’s more than that, it favors the Seahawks. I’m less worried about the Niners’ injuries than this home-field piece. The Niners’ injuries are baked into FPI pretty well at this point, from what we can tell. We are uncomfortable with this line, but our system so far has been to trust FPI even with some really ugly picks. This fits the bill.
Pick: San Francisco –3.5 (–110). Low confidence.
