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 -5% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 3,374 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of 0.3% across 762 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us). Our ETA for having the overall number back profitable is currently November 7th, the likeliest date of a World Series Game 7 and the eve of college basketball season.
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 have a gambling problem, get help.
Lines for these come from the Vegas consensus or the closest approximation available at the time picks are written, unless otherwise noted. For futures bets and motorsports bets, odds are taken from the better option between Bovada and BetOnline as our best approximation of the Vegas consensus, which isn’t currently/accurately available online. FanGraphs is heavily used in making MLB picks.
Just MLB futures for a while, posted Monday through Friday. For context: The MLB futures portfolio started at the beginning of the season with 520 units, with another 520 in reserve in case we need them for hedging down the line.
NLCS
Yes, we’re piling on Atlanta. The value on these guys is just so much higher than it is everywhere else.
The narrative in the NL East, where the Mets lead by four games, seems to be that Atlanta’s banged up and that the Mets are getting guys back. This is a strange way to interpret a situation where, by FanGraphs’s Depth Charts, New York is expecting 4.0 fWAR over the rest of the year from guys currently injured while Atlanta’s expecting 5.2. Yes, we’ll concede, Atlanta’s injury situation is worse, but it’s not the severity of it that’s holding these guys back in the market. It’s the recency, and the “trend.” Each team could have more guys get hurt today. Each team could have setbacks today. Atlanta’s the underdog in the division race, but they only trail by four games, they’ve got a team’s worth of cushion in the Wild Card race, and they’re 20-5 on the month of June while the Mets are just 13-11.
Atlanta’s “banged up,” though.
Pick: Atlanta to win +600. Medium confidence.
World Series
There’s another aspect with this where we don’t necessarily need Atlanta to win for these plays to work. For one thing, we have a lot of other lines in the water, but for another, these give us leverage. In futures betting, because the vig is so large, you need a lot of leverage—it’s not like we can just bank on these odds going down a little bit so someone else’s will rise, they need to go down enough for someone else’s to rise and also enough to cover the vig with that rise—but we have a lot of leverage here. And we have those other lines in the water. Including a few fishing for Mets.
Pick: Atlanta to win +1400. Medium confidence.
