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 –2.3% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,282 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.2% across 2,268 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.
Active markets today: Major League Baseball moneylines and futures.
Single-day MLB bets: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%, betting strictly moneylines. We’re trying the same approach this year. We’re 4–8 so far, down 4.70 units. It’s been a bad start, but we did have a nice mid-April run last year, so we’re hoping to turn it around quickly.
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 plan to place two medium-confidence bets most weekdays.
Tampa Bay @ Anaheim
The red flag here is that Civale’s not only good, but outperforming expectations so far on the year. The Angels, though, seem to be undervalued in futures markets—which may be true here as well—and have a fresh bullpen after last night’s outing by Tyler Anderson. We found some evidence two years ago that teams who won their last game are undervalued on Tuesdays. We didn’t test it heavily again last year, but it’s encouraging here.
Pick: Anaheim to win +109. Low confidence. (Civale and Sandoval must start.)
ALCS
Speaking of those futures markets: The Angels aren’t this bad. They’re a bottom-ten roster, but not a bottom-five. These odds are too long, and we’ll happily take a flyer at the same price we got their AL West odds earlier in this process.
Pick: Anaheim to win +7500. Medium confidence.
AL Central
The Royals are a little worse, but the AL Central remains open, and the nice thing about the Royals’ roster is that their rotation has a lot of veteran upside. Add a good performance from the bullpen (something very possible, given how back-and-forth bullpens go), and the Royals could have a really good pitching staff. At this price, we like ‘em.
Pick: Kansas City to win +700. Medium confidence.
