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% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,551 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +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. We survived the NHL futures scare, emerging with a 5% profit for our efforts.
Single-day MLB bets: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%, betting strictly moneylines. We’ve tried a similar approach this year. We’re 80–73 so far, down 6.96 units. It seems we did not, in fact, find something that worked. We keep trying, though. And we did go 3–0 yesterday.
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 place two medium-confidence bets most weekdays until sometime in September when the scenarios become more specific.
Philadelphia @ Detroit
We do expect some more regression from Tarik Skubal, but only slightly. This is more that we don’t think he’s enough to outweigh the overall mismatch.
Pick: Philadelphia to win –113. Low confidence. (Suárez and Skubal must start.)
Colorado @ Houston
We don’t think the Astros are going to get red hot here, but they’re a good team, as we’ve been pointing out, and we’ve been having success with Hunter Brown in particular. The market seems to be behind on his positive regression.
Pick: Houston to win –265. Low confidence. (Gomber and Brown must start.)
Chicago (NL) @ San Francisco
Kyle Hendricks probably isn’t as bad as his numbers, but it’s unlikely he’s magically good again. Even if he is, it’s fair to speculate that the Cubs’ bullpen is in its own head.
Pick: San Francisco to win –115. Low confidence. (Hendricks and Rodriguez must start.)
NLCS
We’re seeing value on the Phillies again, and this is the first time we’ve seen it all year in the NLCS market. Accordingly, we’re doubling up on these odds. We’re a long way from making the Phillies a profitable option, but this at least improves our worst-case scenario with them, which is nice because we still don’t have any postseason futures on Los Angeles.
Pick: Philadelphia to win +290. Medium confidence. x2
