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 -4.7% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 3,606 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of 1.0% across 947 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us). Our ETA to get the overall number back profitable is currently November 5th, the date of a potential World Series Game 7.
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 have a gambling problem, get help.
Lines for these come from the Vegas consensus or the closest approximation available at the time picks are written, unless otherwise noted. For futures bets (in both sports and politics) and motorsports bets, odds are taken from the better option between Bovada and BetOnline as our best approximation of the Vegas consensus, which isn’t currently/accurately available online. FanGraphs is heavily used in making MLB picks. FiveThirtyEight’s SPI is heavily used in making soccer picks. ESPN’s FPI is heavily used in making NFL picks.
We’re going to push the college football futures again this week, either to tomorrow or through the weekend, so it’s just MLB and NFL today. More content should be back tomorrow beyond just the bets, but today, it’s just the bets. For unit context: We started the season with 1,040 units available for futures and hedges against those futures. Entering today, we’ve netted 14.74 units of profit, and we have 600.74 units in the bankroll, with 454 units pending. On the NFL side, we started the season with 50 units available for our two-bets-a-week, once-a-week cadence, plus another 50 available in reserve for hedges.
World Series
We’d prefer to be hedging right now, but our leverage isn’t high enough and all our value is on the favorites. Hopefully, the Mariners get us a win this afternoon and that changes, but until then, we’re sticking with value.
This does help our portfolio. It brings Atlanta closer to Philadelphia in upside, and it pushes Seattle into the black as a World Series-specific scenario (we have high upside on the Mariners, but it’s almost all on the ALCS). We remain in a boat where we have extreme upside on San Diego and Philadelphia, with good upside on Atlanta and Seattle, low downside on Houston, and high downside on the other three. With the Padres winning last night, we’re considering a Dodgers hedge tomorrow, but it’s currently looking just a little too limiting. We’ll see where today leaves us.
Pick: Atlanta to win +600. Medium confidence.
Pick: Seattle to win +2200. Medium confidence.
AFC West
The division side of our NFL portfolio is a little tenuous right now, and while value on the postseason half helps, we like there to be more regular season balance. The value here is solid, and this is the most probable positive-value play we can make. We’ll take it, in a little bit of anchoring.
Pick: Kansas City to win -230. Low confidence.
Pick: Kansas City to win -230. Low confidence.
