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 –2.2% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,813 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.2% across 2,323 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: MLB, college football, and the NFL, all in both single-game and futures markets, plus our weekly election futures. It’s a busy day. Here’s the context on each market:
MLB moneylines: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%. We’re 167–145–4 so far this year, down 10.79 units. It’s been a bad showing.
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 place two medium confidence bets most weekdays throughout the regular season. We might extend into weekends now that the division futures are starting to pay back out, so keep an eye out for that on Saturday and Sunday.
Single-game college football bets: Our history here is mediocre, and true to form, we’re 7–9 so far this year. We’re down 2.78 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 came very close to disaster. 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 bet a variable number of units per week.
Single-game NFL bets: We published these for the first time last year, and they went terribly. So far this year, we’re 4–3, up 0.78 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.
Election futures: These have been our best market historically, with a 17% overall ROI and significant profits both times we’ve done them—in 2020 and 2022. We started this year with a 1,000-unit portfolio and a plan to bet it as a series of 20 mini-portfolios, each leveraged against itself. We’re still approaching it in that manner, with most mini-portfolios placed and published on Fridays (they used to be published on Saturdays, but we pivoted recently). So far, we’re up 18.50 units. Those are going back into the bets. We’re going to do a second election portfolio down the line, a standalone portfolio, but this is a continuation of the process we started back around the Fourth of July.
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.
Philadelphia @ New York (NL)
We’re trying betting against the perceived hottest team in baseball. That’s the approach we started yesterday. We might pivot in the exact opposite direction if it goes on a losing streak. We might keep going with it if it hangs in there. We are at the bottom of the barrel on MLB moneylines this season.
Pick: Philadelphia to win +121. Low confidence. (Walker and Severino must start.)
World Series
We like the value a lot on the Diamondbacks. They’ve faded and they’re flawed, but every one of these playoff teams is flawed to some extent. Arizona’s got an effective 1.5-game lead (Atlanta owns that tiebreaker) on playoff position with ten games to play. We like them to get out of those ten alive.
This does push us into betting the Yankees again. The value isn’t as high on New York as it is on Arizona, but it’s not bad. The reason the D-Backs future pushes us into betting these guys is that betting something else would make the Yankees an unprofitable scenario for our portfolio. That’s a scenario we want to avoid. We want as many profitable routes as possible, provided we don’t have to place negative-EV bets to get them.
Pick: New York (AL) to win +500. Medium confidence.
Pick: Arizona to win +2400. Medium confidence.
South Alabama @ Appalachian State
All three of Movelor, SP+, and FPI like South Alabama in this one, mostly because South Alabama beat Northwestern State by 77 points last week. The question, of course, is how much that performance should matter.
For what it’s worth, Movelor would still like South Alabama to cover this number even without the 77-point margin. It is very difficult for a team to shift its Movelor rating by more than three points in a given week. Even then, though, we trust the market more than ratings systems at this point in the season, and we think ratings systems have the effect of holding markets back sometimes. This is still the South Alabama team who lost to North Texas by two touchdowns. App State is not what so many analysts want them to be, but they’re a solid football team. We’ll trust the market and trust the Mountaineers.
Pick: Appalachian State –7 (–120). Low confidence.
Heisman Trophy
After last week, in which Quinn Ewers went down and Carson Beck played underwhelmingly, we really like Jalen Milroe’s chances at this thing. The problem is, the market likes them too. So, we’ll hold off, hope on Milroe’s odds to recede (Nico Iamaleava might get a ton of excitement coming out of this weekend), and make a call on him ahead of next weekend’s Georgia game.
Instead, we’re going to take Ewers and Miller Moss.
With Ewers, the argument is fairly simple: He’s the first string quarterback on what’s probably the best team in the country, Heisman markets have some dumb elements within them which are leading Arch Manning to artificially lower Ewers’s stock, Ewers will keep the job if he gets healthy, and—although oblique injuries can be nasty—we’re optimistic about him only missing 1.5 or 2.5 games, something which shouldn’t hold him back too much. There’s enough of a chance he comes back this week or next that we feel we need to grab him at these odds. We aren’t going to load up, but we’re going to make sure we have something on Quinn Ewers. If he plays 10.5 great games and Texas enters the College Football Playoff 13–0, it’ll take one hell of a performance elsewhere to keep that trophy out of his hands.
With Moss, the argument is also fairly simple: Lincoln Riley’s quarterbacks win the Heisman Trophy. We already have something on Moss, but he’s probably being slept on by the markets. I understand he probably isn’t Baker Mayfield, Caleb Williams, or Kyler Murray. But he might be better than Jalen Hurts, and that’s pretty damn good. Hurts didn’t win a Heisman, but with the Big Ten opening up a little bit and expectations so much lower for USC than for Georgia or Texas or Alabama, we can see the path. Moss is our pick right now if we’re looking for the best value. Two units on him, making him a +60 scenario for our portfolio right now.
Pick: Quinn Ewers to win +1600. Low confidence.
Pick: Miller Moss to win +1800. Low confidence. x2
College Football Playoff
On the team side, we like Texas and Alabama as well. We’re putting two units on the Longhorns and one on the Tide to win it all. I’m not sure either is actually individually as likely as Ohio State to win the title, but as a pair, I’d take them ahead of the Buckeyes, and I might put both ahead of Georgia as well.
To make the playoff, we like Memphis and Washington State.
Our model is treating WSU as half of a power conference team, which might be inflating their chances. If they get to 11–1 or 12–0, they will be in the picture. It’s a bad sign that the AP didn’t rank them this week—perception matters, and it doesn’t help perception that some lazy AP voters didn’t notice a win for which they’d heavily reward a different team—but WSU does get two more decent chances to grab attention these next two weeks. Beat San Jose State and the 4–0 Cougs might cross into the top 25, putting them on the CFP committee’s radar. Beat popular mid-major darling Boise State next weekend on the Blue Turf and the Cougs’ playoff chance will probably finally be noticed by the public. At 10-to-1, the odds are long enough for us to take this shot.
Memphis is more straightforward. They’re the best Group of Five team, they have a road win over Florida State which should help give them the edge over teams with one fewer loss, and by virtue of being the best Group of Five team they’re also the AAC favorites. 4-to-1 is too long for the Tigers.
Pick: Memphis to make playoff +400. Low confidence.
Pick: Washington State to make playoff +1000. Low confidence.
Pick: Texas to win national championship +500. Low confidence. x2
Pick: Alabama to win national championship +900. Low confidence.
New England @ New York Jets
We don’t see a reason to go against FPI here. We see that the Patriots are better than expected, but the Jets should be the better team, and even if Robert Saleh is the worst head coach in the league (which he might be), visions of that leading him to psych out his own team ahead of a game with high embarrassment potential are probably overblown.
Pick: NY Jets –6 (–110). Low confidence.
Super Bowl
Speaking of the AFC East: Are markets making too little of how open it is for the Bills’ taking? They already won in Miami. Robert Saleh might be the worst head coach in the NFL. The Bills have their shortcomings, but they’ve consistently found ways in recent years to at least be in the picture. No, they haven’t made it past the Divisional Round in three years or made it past the Chiefs in four. But that’s the kind of thing that creates value.
Pick: Buffalo to win +1100. Low confidence.
AFC
Sticking with that, we like the Bills here as well. We also like the Chargers, who aren’t flashy but might be pretty strong in the trenches. We don’t publish player futures here aside from our Heisman portfolio (if it goes well, we might add more), but we don’t think Joe Alt is a crazy idea for Offensive Rookie of the Year.
Pick: Buffalo to win +600. Low confidence.
Pick: LA Chargers to win +2000. Low confidence.
NFC
In the NFC, we’re high on the Cardinals. They weren’t good last year, but that was expected. People forget Kyler Murray does have playoff experience, even if it went badly, and one of the sneakier explanations for the Eagles’ fall-off after Jonathan Gannon and Shane Steichen left is that Jonathan Gannon left. We like the value, especially with the Niners fighting so many injuries.
Pick: Arizona to win +2800. Low confidence.
NFC West
Same idea here, but I suppose we should mention how fun Marvin Harrison Jr. should be. It’s not generally a very good idea to draft wide receivers so early in the first round, but it’s easy to see this working out.
Pick: Arizona to win +500. Low confidence.
NFC North
Last, the Packers. It was big for them to avoid 0–2. It’s big for them that the Lions are also 1–1. It’s big for them that Jordan Love’s at least practicing in some capacity.
Pick: Green Bay to win +350. Low confidence.
2024 U.S. Presidential Election
This week’s mini-portfolio is not leveraged against itself. If this turns into a red landslide or if Nebraska’s second congressional district votes very differently from how it’s expected to vote, this mini-portfolio will get wiped out.
More likely, it gets a 33% return.
We’re putting all 54 of this week’s units on NE–2. Polling is limited here, but it went for Biden by 6.5 points in 2020, and it only went for Trump by 2.2 points in 2016. Redistricting did expand the district’s geographic footprint, but the precincts added and subtracted would have netted out to a similar 2020 result. Our guess is that the district has, like a lot of heavily suburban areas, shifted bluer since 2016.
Why are we going in so hard on it?
There still aren’t many opportunities for value on the Democratic side in this election. This is one of the few with a positive EV, per Nate Silver’s model and current odds. Meanwhile, the two scenarios where we’re most vulnerable—Harris winning one of GA/AZ but losing one of WI/PA/MI—are both scenarios where Harris most likely has this electoral vote wrapped up. This dampens the risk of those two scenarios, and the only place it heightens our risk is in a part of the electoral snake where our portfolio’s fairly strong already.
Seven mini-portfolios left, plus one separate standalone portfolio which will most likely come one to three days before Election Day, once the World Series is over.
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win NE–2 (–300). Medium confidence. x27
