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 –0.6% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 5,100 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 MLB moneyline today, two MLB futures. We remain unsure when we’ll do our college football futures for this week, but it’s either tomorrow or Thursday. Here’s the context on each of today’s markets.
Single-game MLB bets: On the season, we’re 87–57–4, we’re up 22.53 units, we’re up 15% (the average line on our winners has been –109). We’re looking for our twelfth straight win today.
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 78.19 units, or 10.4%.
Texas @ New York (NL)
The Rangers won last night in dramatic fashion, rallying in the eighth and ninth to beat the Mets. Is that enough to cure what ails them? Maybe. Viewing it neutrally, though, it’s hard to use it as a cause for belief. This is a team that’s overperformed its fundamentals all year until its recent crash to earth. We don’t want to bet an underdog with such a long winning streak on the line, and we don’t want to bet non-playoff teams this time of year, but it’s hard to find better value than the Mets tonight. What a thing to say.
Pick: New York (NL) to win +121. Low confidence. (Heaney and Quintana must start.)
World Series
The Astros stole the Red Sox’ soul last night, and I don’t know if it’s going to come back. Elsewhere, though, the Mariners kept winning and the Rangers gave themselves what could go on to be seen as a little jolt. The result? Markets didn’t move, and probabilities didn’t change much either, and there’s still value here on Houston, value that’s pretty new for our portfolio.
What’s not new to our portfolio is having value on Atlanta, but at the short odds, we have to keep going back to that well to keep that potential outcome profitable. We now have 22 units down on Atlanta to win it all, at average odds of +453.
Pick: Atlanta to win +300. Medium confidence.
Pick: Houston to win +850. Medium confidence.
