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 –2.4% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,871 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +1.6% across 2,368 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: Everything. Single-game MLB and MLB futures. Single-game college football and college football futures. Single-game NFL and NFL futures. Election futures. Here’s the context on each market:
MLB moneylines: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%. We’re 169–150–4 so far this year, down 13.16 units. It’s been a bad showing, and we are grateful it will soon be over.
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. Now that division futures have begun paying out, we’re doing it on weekends as well. These are still tracking well—of the twelve expected playoff teams, three would be bad World Series winners for our portfolio, four would be great, and the other five would be in between—but there’s a long way to go.
Single-game college football bets: Our history here is mediocre, and we’re off to a really bad start this season, with a 7–13 record on the young year. We’re down 6.78 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, though, we’re 6–4 and up 1.56 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 Thursdays (they used to be published on Saturdays, then Friday, but we keep pivoting). 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 first portfolio 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 look at both.
Tampa Bay @ Detroit
We’re still betting against the team we think the public perceives to be the hottest. It’s a young effort, but it isn’t going particularly well. We’ve tried a lot of things this year. Few have worked. We’re excited to get back to basics next year.
Pick: Tampa Bay to win +150. Low confidence. (Alexander and Olson must start.)
World Series
It’s been rare to see value on Cleveland this year, but with the Guardians now only half a game back of the Yankees (effectively a whole game—the Yankees hold the tiebreaker), there’s opportunity. We’ll double up on it, making the Guards winning it all a profitable outcome for our portfolio. We were hoping for good Yankees odds, but they aren’t there today. We’ll keep checking.
Pick: Cleveland to win +1300. Medium confidence. x2
Army @ Temple
We’re getting into the portion of the year where Movelor tends to perform pretty well. This is tight—it only has Army by 14.8—but we’ll follow its lean.
Pick: Army –12 (–115). Low confidence.
Heisman Trophy
We’re not entirely sold on Miami, and the odds on Cam Ward are expensive. We like Jalen Milroe in theory, but everybody does, so the market’s tough. We’re still high on Carson Beck, but we’ve got enough down on him. So, we’re going to put a little on Travis Hunter this week. It helps that he has such high name recognition. It helps that Colorado is getting closer to a 6–6 projection. It especially helps that there are so many quarterbacks whose cases are really, really similar to one another. We could see some voters defaulting into Hunter, overwhelmed by the (accurate) logic that a two-way player this good is too special to deny.
Pick: Travis Hunter to win +1000. Low confidence.
College Football Playoff
We’ll start with Mizzou: They have a favorable schedule, but only if they can keep it. We’re not sure they can. The Boston College win shouldn’t age as well as Mizzou fans hoped it looked at the time. Alabama might crush these guys. There’s a decent chance they’re an underdog next weekend at Texas A&M. Between Auburn, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, there’s a solid chance they get knocked off at home. There are a lot of things that can go wrong for the Missouri Tigers, who are more similar to LSU than they are to Mississippi.
Next: Clemson. We like them to make the playoff. We think they’re the best team in the ACC. That’s pretty simple.
James Madison. Our model has them as the Group of Five favorite, and we’re inclined to agree. The market doesn’t seem to believe Boise State already having a loss will hurt Boise State. I’m also not sure the market recognizes the danger from Fresno State and San Jose State in the Mountain West.
BYU got a great win last week, great enough to put it in Big 12 contention. They also have a road win over a team who could challenge for the ACC crown. That’s a good way to start building your résumé.
Finally, Alabama. We’re not sure they’re significantly likelier than Ohio State to win it all, as our model implies, but we do think there’s roughly a 1-in-4 chance they’re the best team in the country. It could be any of them, the Buckeyes, Georgia, and Texas. We’re grabbing this now because if they win this weekend, the jig is up.
Pick: Missouri to miss playoff –140. Low confidence.
Pick: Clemson to make playoff +220. Low confidence.
Pick: James Madison to make playoff +1600. Low confidence.
Pick: BYU to make playoff +2000. Low confidence.
Pick: Alabama to win national championship +800. Low confidence.
Dallas @ New York Giants
What we’ve been doing so far—and this sample is very, very small—is trusting FPI. When we have the choice, we pick what seems to us to be the most “normal” game, the one where systems like FPI should be most accurate. Oddly enough, we’ve done better when we don’t have a choice. We’re 4–2 when we only have one game to choose from, and 5–2 when there are two games to choose from. This is an extremely small sample, but we’re interested enough in the phenomenon to pursue it.
Pick: NY Giants +5.5 (–110). Low confidence.
AFC
The Bills look great so far, and while we do already have them at 6-to-1 to win the AFC, our portfolio includes six other AFC picks. So, we’re adding a second on Buffalo.
Pick: Buffalo to win +400. Low confidence.
NFC
It’s hard to stay good, and the Lions might be a little vulnerable this year. They’re a little beat up right now, their division’s looking competitive, and for all the Sam Darnold skepticism…Jared Goff is better, but he isn’t Patrick Mahomes.
Pick: Green Bay to win +1000. Low confidence.
Pick: Minnesota to win +1100. Low confidence.
AFC East
Going back to the Bills: We can’t get enough of them.
Pick: Buffalo to win –175. Low confidence.
NFC South
The value’s solid here on the Saints coming off of last week’s loss. They weren’t going to go undefeated, and they still played a good Eagles team close.
Pick: New Orleans to win +140. Low confidence.
AFC North
We’re a few weeks away from another round of, “Man, Mike Tomlin can coach.” Give us his Steelers.
Pick: Pittsburgh to win +225. Low confidence.
2024 U.S. Presidential Election
We’re going with a lot of balance today, trying to move our upside from the landslide scenarios to scenarios more in the middle of the s-curve. That takes us to Ohio and Virginia as anchors, and to North Carolina and Pennsylvania as opposing forces in the middle. By putting more on Ohio and Virginia, we get to a spot where this improves our portfolio’s outcome in roughly 93% of Election Day universes.
Pick: Republican Candidate to win Ohio –850. Medium confidence. x10
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win Virginia –700. Medium confidence. x9
Pick: Republican Candidate to win North Carolina –130. Medium confidence. x4
Pick: Democratic Candidate to win Pennsylvania –125. Medium confidence. x4
