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 +0.1% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 5,590 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of +4.1% across 1,950 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us). We are profitable all-time, but only narrowly.
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 and a pick for tonight’s MACtion. We’re pushing our NFL futures back to tomorrow, and we’re pushing our college football futures back an extra day as well, so look for both of those tomorrow. Here’s the context on each market.
MLB futures: We began the season with 750 units in our MLB futures portfolio. Using FanGraphs probabilities and including today’s plays, our mean expected final return on those 750 units is 32.20 units, or 4.3%,but it’s more binary than that, as we’ll explain below.
Single-game college football bets: On the season, we’re 51–45–2. We’re up 2.28 units and up 2%.
World Series (Hedge)
Well, shit.
For the second straight year, we’ve gotten our MLB futures portfolio to a spot where if the NL champion wins the World Series, we profit by well more than 100 units, and if the AL champion wins, we more or less break even on the futures effort over the year. Unfortunately, last year the AL champion won, and that’s looking likely again this year.
We’ve been hedging, and we continue to hedge, but we’re on the verge of losing our second straight weighted coin flip with a lot at stake, and the odds aren’t there to meaningfully hedge right now. They also aren’t likely to be there if the Diamondbacks force a Game 6, so while we continue to hold out hope for a three-game Arizona win streak, we’re going to minimally hedge over these next few days in the hopes of being able to place a meaningful hedge on Game 7. Where does that leave us? If odds are what we conservatively estimate they’ll be (–700 on the Rangers before a hypothetical Game 6, –150 on the Rangers before a hypothetical Game 7), we’ll either make a little more than a unit (if the Rangers win in 5 or 6), make roughly 60 units (if the Rangers win in 7), or make a little less than 150 units (if the Diamondbacks win). Again, not ideal, but we continue to iterate, and we aren’t going to beat ourselves up over getting to this sort of high-upside, no-downside situation two years in a row (especially after profiting by something like 50% in 2021).
Pick: Texas to win –1100. Medium confidence. x2
Kent State @ Akron
Kent State and Akron are not the two worst FBS teams.
They’re very close, though.
Combined, they’re 0–14 against FBS competition on the season, and that is in no way a function of bad luck. Just bad football. Tonight, one of them will win, and Movelor has the value on Kent State to do that, not on Akron. Not liking much else with the two games, we’ll take a little shot.
Pick: Kent State to win +160. Low confidence.
