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 7,386 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. We’re relying on Neil Paine’s NBA forecast as the basis for our playoff futures portfolio. We use our own Gelo model as the basis for our NHL playoff futures portfolio.
Active markets today: Major League Baseball moneylines, plus NBA and NHL futures. No MLB futures today. We’re taking one of our planned days off.
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 42–46 so far, down 9.38 units. This is like when a young team unexpectedly performs well one season then opens slow to start the next year: We don’t know whether we’re going to heat back up or if we’re actually just bad at this.
NBA futures: We’ve only done these once before, but they went well. I believe we made a 7% return on our investment last year. We started at the beginning of the Play-In Tournament with a 100-unit portfolio. Right now, we’re mostly just placing one future per day. We’re up 2.67 units so far.
NHL futures: We’ve had mixed results on these. In 2022, we lost 25% of our futures portfolio. Last year, we made a 33% return. We began on the first day of the playoffs with a 100-unit portfolio. Right now, we’re mostly placing just one future per day. We’re down 2.20 units so far.
Detroit @ Kansas City
This breaks two of our rules (the FanGraphs eROI is negative and Mize has been outperforming his projections), but our rules haven’t been serving us well. The Royals are playing good baseball these days. The Tigers have been middling. Kansas City has a fresh bullpen. Monday winners have been undervalued the last few years on Tuesdays. We’ll roll with KC.
Pick: Kansas City to win –113. Low confidence. (Mize and Marsh must start.)
NBA Finals
The odds lengthened a little since yesterday on the Timberwolves, and we like the sound of that. They’ve got a strong enough core and every intangible you could ask for. Great team to find value on, especially since we’ve banked so much upside on the Celtics.
Pick: Minnesota to win +260. Low confidence.
NHL Western Conference
Gelo’s two core convictions are that the Rangers are undervalued and the Oilers are overvalued. The first has served us well so far. The second has us in a tough spot in the West. We’ll go in a little deeper on the Stars here, hoping for a Rangers win tomorrow that can relieve some tension.
Pick: Dallas to win –128. Low confidence.
