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 7,760 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. For college football bets, we primarily use our own model. For NFL bets, we lean on ESPN’s FPI.
Active markets today: Futures in college football, the NFL, and Major League Baseball. Single-game picks in all three of those as well.
Here’s the history on each and how we approach them:
MLB moneylines: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%. We’re 166–140–4 so far this year, down 7.39 units. A little more than a month ago, we pivoted to a different set of systems. We’re 54–38–1 since the pivot, up 5.41 units. The biggest driver of that success has been Heat Index, our pet metric which gauges the gap between how hot different teams are. Together, various combinations of Heat Index’s first, second, and third picks have gone 39–14–1, generating an 8.59-unit return. In response to a recent plateau, we shortened Heat Index’s sample the other day to two weeks and reverted to only betting one game a day with it. We’ll keep monitoring its performance.
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 later this month when the scenarios become more specific.
Single-game college football bets: Our history here is mediocre, and true to form, we’re 5–6 so far this year. We’re down 1.56 units heading into tonight.
College football futures: Our history here is decent. We’ve generally made small profits, but only small ones, and last year got admittedly dicey (we eventually broke even by piling on South Dakota State and Michigan in their respective national championship games). This year, we’re doing two separate futures funds: The first is our normal one for team futures. It’s 150 units large, and we’re investing five units per week. The second is a new one to bet the Heisman market. It’s 100 units large, but we’ll bet a variable number of units per week. This Heisman thing is new. We’ve done it privately, but we’ve never published.
Single-game NFL bets: We published these for the first time last year, and they went terribly. So far this year, we’re 3–1, up 1.78 units.
NFL futures: Our history’s ok with these. We’re slightly profitable all-time, but we’ve only done them for two years and we only profited in one of the two. Our portfolio is 200 units large. To leave a cushion for hedging and arbitrage purposes, we’re investing roughly six units per week.
You can find both our NFL and college football futures portfolios on this Google Sheet. That should give a better idea of how we’re looking at both.
Tampa Bay @ Cleveland
The Guardians are still our hottest team over the last two weeks, and while playing the White Sox helps with that, it’s not the only thing. Meanwhile, the Rays keep struggling. They’ve pitched 26% worse than the season-long MLB average over these last 14 days. That’s the worst by a decent margin.
Pick: Cleveland to win –144. Low confidence. (Pepiot and Williams must start.)
World Series
Merrill Kelly left yesterday’s game with what was labeled a hamstring cramp. Maybe this is why the Diamondbacks’ odds jumped from 22-to-1 to 25-to-1. Arizona also won, though, and the Padres and Braves both lost. We liked 22-to-1. We’ll gladly take the extra multiple.
Pick: Arizona to win +2500. Medium confidence.
NLCS
A similar story here. There’s value on the D-Backs.
Pick: Arizona to win +1200. Medium confidence.
Arizona State @ Texas State
The lines on this one are moving around a bit, with the spread flipping back and forth between favoring either team by one. The total isn’t all that steady either, but we’re taking the over. We understand the idea that ASU knows GJ Kinne’s offense will try to play fast, and that ASU might try to control the clock and lean on the Texas State defense. The problem with that theory is that I’m not sure Texas State’s defense can tackle Cam Skattebo. This game should get really, really fun.
Pick: Over 59.5 (–105). Low confidence.
College Football Playoff
You can check our ongoing portfolio here, but the short version is that we’re mostly focused on who’s going to make the playoff, with a few national championship picks that were made more because we believed the teams in question (Clemson, Penn State, and Notre Dame) were undervalued playoff contenders even at very, very short playoff odds. We took the national championship bets there because the value was better than the playoff value. We don’t expect them to hit, but we do expect the upside to provide us leverage come December if they do in fact make the playoff.
This week, we’re taking four teams to make the playoff and one team to miss.
The first two to make the playoff—Clemson and Notre Dame—are us buying the dip. Each has a very favorable schedule. Clemson is the ACC favorite. To some extent, we’re doubling down on national championship plays, but we’re also putting ourselves in a position where if these teams make it, those national championship plays will have been paid for already.
For two longer shots, we turn to Washington and UNLV. We’re starting to think people are undervaluing Washington. Jedd Fisch is a good coach who produced quick results at Arizona. The schedule, though heavy on travel, isn’t the worst set of Big Ten opponents. With UNLV, we’re surprised this value is available. We’re seeing a lot of hype around these guys in the blogosphere. What this probably is, though, is an overvaluing of Boise State. Boise State’s probably better than UNLV. But not by this much.
Miami? A classic team it’s easy to overvalue. The hype might be for real, but we need to see a lot more before we buy in all the way.
Pick: Clemson to make playoff +200. Low confidence.
Pick: Notre Dame to make playoff +300. Low confidence.
Pick: Washington to make playoff +1600. Low confidence.
Pick: UNLV to make playoff +1400. Low confidence.
Pick: Miami (FL) to MISS playoff +120. Low confidence.
Heisman Trophy
Here’s a theory of the Heisman Trophy race:
Georgia, Texas, and Ohio State are the three best teams in the country.
Quinn Ewers and Carson Beck are the two best NFL quarterback prospects in the country.
Barring a transcendent season from someone else or some shocking numbers from another playoff team, the Heisman will probably go to Ewers or Beck?
We’ll put two units on Beck, getting in on him while Ewers’s stock is high.
Pick: Carson Beck to win +1100. Low confidence. x2
Buffalo @ Miami
We’ve had good luck trusting FPI so far, and we don’t think the injury balance is significant enough here to shake us from that trust. The Bills are a good team. We trust Josh Allen even with his messed up non-throwing hand. We have some questions about the Dolphins combined health and distraction factor at skill positions.
Pick: Buffalo +2.5 (+100). Low confidence.
AFC East
Going off of that: We think the Bills are too likely to win for us to pass this up. We’ll want favorites in our division mix eventually, but we’d rather get those favorites as underdogs and see them become favorites. If we have to, we’ll drop a lot of units some weeks on some ~75% favorites, but hopefully, this gets us off to a good start.
Pick: Buffalo to win +190. Low confidence.
NFC North
Why do we want some favorites? To cover our underdogs. The Bears’ offense looked miserable. Jordan Love got hurt. The Lions are a deserved favorite, but the chance of something going wrong in Detroit is too high to pass on this price. The Vikings are probably a better team, if anything, than what they would have been with JJ McCarthy starting as a rookie. The market seems to be undervaluing them, though, because of the move.
Pick: Minnesota to win +625. Low confidence.
Super Bowl
That said about the Lions…we like the Lions. Partly because the NFC as a whole is kind of undervalued in Super Bowl markets right now.
Pick: Detroit to win +1100. Low confidence.
NFC
On the conference side, we’ll keep picking up teams who are 50/50 to make the playoffs at all. There’s often value from these guys as markets underrate how helpful the division championship can be.
Pick: Tampa Bay to win +2800. Low confidence.
Pick: New Orleans to win +3000. Low confidence.
AFC
One more. Again, you can view our whole portfolio here.
Pick: Pittsburgh to win +2800. Low confidence.
