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 –0.7% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 5,090 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of +3.1% across 1,617 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us).
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 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. FanGraphs is heavily used in making MLB picks.
One moneyline today, two futures. The usual for a Tuesday.
Single-game MLB bets: On the season, we’re 80–57–4, we’re up 18.17 units, we’re up 13% (the average line on our winners has been –106). April was great, May was bad, June was good, July was great. August has been good to us.
MLB futures: We began the season with 750 units in our MLB futures 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. This is circular, because we use FanGraphs probabilities to guide our picks, but if we use FanGraphs probabilities and include today’s plays, our mean expected return on the 750 units (based on what we’ve bet so far) is 77.28 units, or 7.4%.
Texas @ Arizona
Jon Gray is a well-established name, and he’s coming off two successful starts, but his underlying numbers were merely fine in the last one and his recent performance before that wasn’t great. Zac Gallen, meanwhile, continues to mostly hum. With the Diamondbacks rallying off the teeth of the Texas bullpen last night, they’ve set themselves up to face some tired arms in the late innings tonight. We could be looking at three teams within a game of each other atop the AL West tomorrow morning.
Speaking of which…
Pick: Arizona to win –111. Low confidence. (Gray and Gallen must start.)
AL West
We’ve been eying this for a while, but it’s time to take a shot, and we’re gonna make it a double. The Rangers are struggling, and their losses at home this weekend were especially unusual, making them therefore especially confusing. The Astros aren’t playing all that well themselves, but we have a nice little 28-to-1 on the Mariners from June which provides leverage. There’s value on Houston today, and we’re going to take that value, hitching ourselves to their wagon rather than that of the Rangers. It’s only an 8.26-unit swing for us at the moment between the two, but it was 1.31 entering the day, and in the opposite direction.
Pick: Houston to win +140. Medium confidence.
Pick: Houston to win +140. Medium confidence.
