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 -3.9% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 2,819 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.
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.
Another good day for Gelo yesterday, which hit on its over and missed the moneyline but still rose to 3-1 on the young postseason. More from it today, more MLB futures. For those scaling at home, we began with 520 units set aside to be bet in the regular season on baseball (with 520 more in reserve for hedging) and 100 units set aside for NHL futures (with 100 available for hedging there as well).
AL East
This pushes Toronto into unprofitable territory within the AL East for us, but the Yankees have a three and a half game lead and are only narrowly worse than the Blue Jays on paper, with a comparable strength of schedule the rest of the way. Also, there are scenarios in which the Dodgers and White Sox each win their division that leave us in a spot of trouble, and this helps ease the risk for roughly half of those. Keeping a close eye on it, but at these odds we have to take this.
Pick: New York to win +195. Medium confidence.
NL West
The Dodgers are the best team in the West, both in terms of their record and on paper. The Padres are not as good, but they’re close enough and good enough to make this a race. There might be a boy-who-cried-wolf thing going on with the market and the Pads right now after these last two years. The Rockies and Diamondbacks also might be just feisty enough so far that they’re keeping the door open for the guys in San Diego.
Pick: San Diego to win +475. Medium confidence.
Boston @ Carolina
Something might be going on here where the market expects there to be a negative correlation between Game 1 and Game 2 winners within a series, because all of Monday’s winners except the Blues show positive value from Gelo on the consensus except the Blues, and even they’re positive-value with the lines of a lot of books. Whatever the case, we like the Hurricanes again tonight in their effort to hold onto home-ice advantage as the series heads to Boston in a few days.
Pick: Carolina to win -123. Low confidence.
Los Angeles @ Edmonton
Gelo’s hit on both totals we’ve used it for so far, but today, this is the only one showing any sort of value. It sees a 5.53-goal game in Bruins/Canes (5.5 o/u), a 6.34-goal game in Lightning/Leafs (6.5 o/u, favoring the under) and a 5.99-goal game in Blues/Wild (6.0 o/u, favoring the over). Here, it sees 5.86, and while there’s that thing where odd totals are more than 50% more common than even totals in hockey, we’ll take our chances on a 4-2 game if it does get up to six.
Pick: Under 6.5 -123. Low confidence.
Western Conference
Our fade of the Avalanche now extends to a fade of the Flames. After this and the bet below, we’ll have six futures down and all, in some fashion, will be on the non-Colorado/non-Calgary teams in the West.
It always feels good to place a future in the playoffs and see that team immediately win its next game, and that’s what happened with the Kings for us on Monday. So while we only have the Blues and Wild at 8-to-1 each, we have 11-to-1 on the Oilers now and 33-to-1 on the Kings. If things break well, we may be able to hedge at some point next round by parlaying the Flames and Avalanche to make the conference finals. If things break really well, one of the two will lose four of their next six games.
Pick: Edmonton to win +1100. Low confidence.
First Round: Calgary vs. Dallas
Do we believe in the Stars? No. But this is an exercise in trusting Gelo, and at this price we’ll take them, even down 1-0.
Pick: Dallas to win +545. Low confidence.
