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 –0.5% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 5,364 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of +3.1% across 1,754 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. Movelor is heavily used in making college football picks, with some references to ESPN’s FPI and SP+. FPI is heavily used in making NFL picks, but mostly futures.
We’ve got today’s MLB futures, we’ve got this week’s college football futures, and we’ve got college football tonight. Here’s the context on each.
MLB futures: We began the season with 750 units in our MLB futures portfolio. 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 those 750 units is 76.54 units, or 10.2%.
College football futures: We started the season with 300 units in our college football futures portfolio, with the intent being to spend 200 of those over the season’s fifteen weeks and keep 100 in reserve for hedging and arbitrage opportunities. As with the MLB futures, this is circular, but if we use Movelor probabilities and include today’s plays, our mean expected return on the 300 units (based on what we’ve bet so far) is 31.57 units, or 10.5%.
Single-game college football bets: On the season, we’re 41–32–1. We’re up 6.03 units and up 8%.
ALCS
We really like the Astros’ odds down 2–0, primarily because the memory of Max Scherzer unnecessarily pushing his body too far in the 2021 postseason is fresh in our mind. We don’t know if the Astros will win the series, but this is good value, and we love value. We’ll take another look tomorrow heading into Game 3.
Pick: Houston to win +380. Medium confidence.
World Series (Hedge)
What we don’t like about the play above is that it deepens our Rangers liability, so to address that, we’re putting this down on the Phillies. It doesn’t fully pay for our Astros play, but from what we can tell, markets would have the Phillies favored over the Rangers in a head-to-head World Series, even with Texas holding home-field advantage. If that’s true, our Phillies upside doesn’t quite need to equal our Rangers downside to leave us on the right side of the seesaw. Again, more to come tomorrow once we’ve seen what happens tonight.
Pick: Philadelphia to win +140. Medium confidence.
ACC
We have a lot of upside on UNC and a lot of upside on Louisville in this market, and between those two and Duke, it’s highly likely one will face Florida State for the conference title. The value is here, whether Duke wins this weekend or not. We’ll put two units on it to try to increase our leverage.
Pick: Duke to win +1400. Low confidence. x2
Big 12
Our Big 12 approach on the season has been to pick the possible spoilers, but lately, we’ve been anchoring on Oklahoma to finance those deeper shots. We still like the Sooners’ value, narrowly, and this gets them to being a break-even scenario for us. Ideally, someone else will upset Texas and Oklahoma will become our baseline with the upside elsewhere, but we have plenty of time to prepare for a Red River Rematch, so consider this only another step.
Pick: Oklahoma to win +100. Low confidence. x3
Big Ten
This price is wrong on Iowa, who just about has the Big Ten West wrapped up. They’ve proven that within that division, they don’t need points to win games. Ohio State, meanwhile, is only narrowly valuable, but we have enough upside on Penn State to make this worth our while. Four units here.
Pick: Ohio State to win +250. Low confidence. x4
Pick: Iowa to win +1800. Low confidence.
American Athletic Conference
Tulane is looking as strong as ever in the AAC, and we could use a bit extra upside on them. They’re getting closer and closer to wrapping up at least a conference championship appearance, and odds are they’d be favored in that game.
Pick: Tulane to win +155. Low confidence.
Sun Belt
Besides JMU, Troy is the Sun Belt’s best team. We have a lot of strong chips in this league. This is one of the most important.
Pick: Troy to win +325. Low confidence.
MAC
Lastly, we like Miami’s upset potential this weekend against Toledo, and with some upside elsewhere on Ohio, this gives us a strong chance of having the East Division’s representative in the conference championship game. Eastern Michigan is more of a flyer, but Movelor loves their chances.
Pick: Miami (OH) to win +325. Low confidence. x2
Pick: Eastern Michigan to win +4000. Low confidence.
Western Kentucky @ Jacksonville State
For tonight: Zion Webb is apparently set to start tonight after leaving last week’s Liberty game with an injury. Whether he’s at full strength remains to be seen, but Movelor has the line here at 2.8, and 4.7 is our biggest gap of the night. The way we see it, Movelor already partially adjusted to Webb’s injury by accounting for the Gamecocks’ big loss in the game he exited. We don’t have a better play than this one.
Pick: Jacksonville State +7.5 (–108). Low confidence.
