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 7,916 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +1% across 2,399 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 are MLB futures, single-game college football, and single-game NFL. I’m not sure when we’ll do the next round of election futures. Those were going to be today, but they’re being pushed back. We’ll have two rounds done by the end of next week, one way or another.
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 an 11–14 record on the young year. We’re down 4.10 units heading into today. We did go 4–1 last week, for what it’s worth.
Single-game NFL bets: We published these for the first time last year, and they went terribly. So far this year, though, we’re 8–5 and up 2.38 units.
World Series
There’s still value on the Phillies today, whose odds did shorten but who got a little boost with the Mets and Brewers extending their series to a Game 3. We continue to lessen our Philadelphian liability.
On the AL side, we’re putting a little more on the Royals. We mentioned their rotation yesterday, something that didn’t receive a lot of attention amidst the Orioles’ offensive woes. Markets seem very confident in the Yankees, and I can understand that a little bit, given how good they are on paper. But they’re not that good on paper, and I don’t know what about the Aaron Boone era would convince you that this team was going to play beyond itself in the playoffs. Give us the Royals’ value and make them a profitable World Series scenario for us again.
For those curious, our portfolio currently looks like this. This is what we could gain or lose on each team in the LDS, LCS, and World Series. It does not consider what happens in series not involving that team, meaning when we say the Tigers offer us 1,138 units of remaining upside, that doesn’t include who wins the Royals/Yankees ALDS or who wins the NLCS in scenarios where Detroit wins it all:
| Team | Remaining Upside/Downside |
| Tigers | 1138 |
| Padres | 641 |
| Royals | 22 |
| Guardians | -10 |
| Yankees | -12 |
| Phillies | -127 |
| Dodgers | -298 |
| Mets | 280 |
| Brewers | -116 |
We’re Mets fans tonight. (For those curious, our current all-time deficit is 250.64 units, although a lot of that will get washed out by the election.)
Pick: Philadelphia to win +450. Medium confidence. x4
Pick: Kansas City to win +1400. Medium confidence.
Sam Houston @ UTEP
Movelor likes Troy a lot tonight against Texas State, and we’d go with Troy if there were only one starting quarterback down for the Trojans. The possibility the backup is also out makes this worse than a Goose Crowder thing. Something to watch as gametime approaches—sometimes lines wiggle when there’s injury uncertainty even if there isn’t injury news—but we’re staying away.
Instead, we’ll follow the narrow edge Movelor gives to UTEP, who hosts Sam Houston after a big SHSU win. This is a big number for a home underdog on a short week. UTEP is very bad, but their defense isn’t as bad as their offense.
Pick: UTEP +10.5 (–110). Low confidence.
Tampa Bay @ Atlanta
We’ve been digging more into home-field advantage in the NFL, and what we seem to be finding is that the number’s around two points. It might be as low as 1.8, but it’s unlikely it’s lower than that. We’ve been using the old three-point number, and it’s admittedly served us well over the small sample so far this year, but we will relent.
Anyway, these teams are indistinguishable in terms of quality. Home-field advantage is bigger than 1.5 points. We’ll take the Falcons.
Pick: Atlanta –1.5 (–110). Low confidence.
