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 7,953 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2% across 2,411 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 rely heavily on Nate Silver’s presidential election model for our election futures. For college football bets, we primarily use our own model. For NFL bets, we lean on ESPN’s FPI.
Our active markets today are MLB futures, single-game college football, and both NFL and college football futures. Here’s the context on each:
MLB futures – In four of the five years we’ve done these, we’ve profited, twice by large margins. We began this season with 750 units in our portfolio. We placed two medium confidence bets most weekdays throughout the regular season, as usual, then pivoted to placing a more variable number throughout the playoffs, as usual. We’re currently big fans of the Guardians and Mets, and we do not want the Dodgers to win it all.
Single-game college football bets – Our history here is mediocre, and we’ve had a bad first half of this season, with a 17–23 record so far. We’re down 7.68 units heading into this week.
College football futures – Our history here is decent. We’ve generally made small profits, but only small ones, and last year came very close to disaster. This year, we’re doing two separate futures funds: The first is our normal one for team futures. It’s 150 units large, and we’re investing five units per week. The second is a new one to bet the Heisman market. It’s 100 units large, but we bet a variable number of units per week.
NFL futures – Our history’s ok with these. We’re slightly profitable all-time, but we’ve only done them for two years and we only profited in one of the two. Our portfolio is 200 units large. To leave a cushion for hedging and arbitrage purposes, we’re investing roughly six units per week.
You can find both our NFL and college football futures portfolios on this Google Sheet. That should give a better idea of how we look at both.
NLCS
This is tricky. We’ve been holding off on it, because the value doesn’t fit our usual definition of positive. What do I mean? In the postseason, we check both the FanGraphs Playoff Odds and ZiPS’s single-series projections. The latter are useful because they account for pitching matchups. The former are what we use all season. If both indicate a bet is positive-value, we consider that bet positive-value. If only one indicates a bet is positive-value, we don’t consider that bet positive-value. The Playoff Odds have this at a +2% expected value. ZiPS has it at –1%.
Still, we’re taking it, and we’re putting 16 units on it. The only positive value we’re seeing is a +4% World Series play on the Guardians, and we have enough on the Guardians. We’re going to be in a bad spot if the Yankees and Dodgers both win their series, so while we won’t call this a full hedge, it’s a sort of semi-hedge.
We still really want the Mets to win tonight, but this lessens our Dodgers downside a little bit further.
New scenarios:
| ALCS | NLCS | World Series | Final Net |
| CLE | LAD | CLE | 294.53 |
| CLE | NYM | CLE | 286.20 |
| CLE | NYM | NYM | 243.20 |
| NYY | NYM | NYM | 181.40 |
| NYY | LAD | NYY | -80.87 |
| NYY | NYM | NYY | -89.20 |
| CLE | LAD | LAD | -226.47 |
| NYY | LAD | LAD | -288.27 |
Go Mets.
Pick: Los Angeles to win –150. Medium confidence. x8
Western Kentucky @ Sam Houston
Last week, Movelor went 2–5 against the spread in the seven games we picked. Last night, we faded Movelor and got a win. Tonight, we’re going to do it again, with the basic theory being that not only is the market better than Movelor, but that bettors underestimate how much better the market is than the fundamentals. In other words: We think the fundamentals have this as WKU –1.5. We see bettors betting it to SHSU –2. We think they should maybe go further.
Just a theory, but in these games where we don’t have much of a read on the teams involved (which is even more true of the other Wednesday night game this week), it’s the best we can offer. We’re nine winning bets from being back even on the college football season. Here’s hoping we can cut that to eight.
Pick: Sam Houston –2 (–110). Low confidence.
Heisman Trophy
We still don’t like the price on Ashton Jeanty, Dillon Gabriel, or Cam Ward. We have some Jeanty already in our portfolio, so we’re ok on that front, and we’re not particularly worried about Ward just yet. He’s very good, but he’s a chaotic quarterback, and we still think Miami will get smacked at some point this year. We’re nervous, because beating Louisville would dramatically increase Miami’s chances of making the playoff, but we don’t think the Heisman market will necessarily notice that. Its reactions tend to correlate more with how big the hype is around the game than how big the game itself is.
Gabriel is a little different. We’re worried about Dillon Gabriel. Even with him, though, we don’t think he’s playing well enough to get the trophy unless Oregon wins the Big Ten, and that’s still less than 50% likely to happen. He fits the “Great QB on Title Contender” category of Heisman winner. He’s not transcendent. Others, like Travis Hunter, are.
Ultimately, if Hunter plays twelve games, we expect him to win the Heisman. He’s doing so much more than everybody else. We’re worried about that twelve-game piece after he left last week’s game early, but his coach says he’s set to play this weekend. We might not see 8-to-1 on him again, so we’re going to grab it while it’s here. I would still consider him the Heisman favorite, though not a favorite over the field.
We expect Quinn Ewers’s stock to rise again next week, because we expect Texas to beat Georgia on Saturday. We don’t really think he’ll win this, but if Hunter gets hurt and Jeanty tapers off, we could see voters coalescing around the one 13–0 quarterback in the country, even if he missed some time against Mississippi State and Louisiana Monroe. Ewers has a better chance of going 13–0 than anybody else.
One huge longshot we really like? Bryson Daily. We don’t think Army’s going to beat Notre Dame. We don’t think Army’s going to win the AAC. But the chances of them doing that are correlated with one another, and they’re better than 1-in-181, and if there’s a 12–0 Army team whose quarterback is rushing for multiple touchdowns every game? At the very least, that guy’s going to get an invitation up to New York after his game in D.C. earlier that day.
Going by the odds, we’re set to profit on five of the top nine players on the board. We have significant doubts about two of our five, and we’re scared of one of the other four (Gabriel), but we’re not scared of the other three (Ward, Jalen Milroe, and Cade Klubnik). We’re especially not scared of Milroe.
More to come next week, as always. We’ve spent only 16 of our 100 units, so we have a lot of levers left to pull.
Pick: Travis Hunter to win +800. Low confidence.
Pick: Quinn Ewers to win +2200. Low confidence.
Pick: Bryson Daily to win +18000. Low confidence.
College Football Playoff
We’re approaching presidential election markets levels of inefficiency here.
Texas A&M already has a loss (to a team markets evidently think is hardly more than 50% playoff-likely) and still has to play LSU and Texas, with road trips to South Carolina and Auburn also on the calendar.
LSU already has a loss (to a team with a 1-in-500 playoff chance) and still has to play Texas A&M and Alabama, with road trips to Arkansas and Florida also on the calendar.
This year’s SEC might be the best college football conference we’ve ever seen, but we’ve only seen five 9–3 teams finish in the CFP Rankings’ top ten in the ten-year history of the exercise, and it’s been five years since anybody’s done it. It’s significantly unlikely either of these two do it, especially since we have Texas A&M just as likely to go 8–4 as to actually win nine games. So, we’ll take our layups and put two units on each.
With Penn State, again, I’m just not sure a result against USC looks as good as markets are implying. I do think Penn State will make the playoff, but these guys still have to play Ohio State, they’ve got losable games against Wisconsin and Minnesota, and I don’t know that they’re going to have a ranked win. 10–2 might not do it for Penn State.
I’m wishing we made our college football futures portfolio bigger. I didn’t consider how much less efficient the playoff markets might become with the expansion.
Pick: Texas A&M to miss playoff –160. Low confidence. x2
Pick: LSU to miss playoff –150. Low confidence. x2
Pick: Penn State to miss playoff +475. Low confidence.
AFC
There’s still narrow value available on the Chiefs, and we’re going to take that. With a portfolio approach, it’s the kind of thing we need to grab while it’s there, and with the AFC corner of our portfolio a great big mess, we’re happy to push Kansas City closer to a profitable scenario.
Pick: Kansas City to win +250. Low confidence. x2
NFC
In the NFC, our portfolio’s thriving. With the Falcons added, we now have something on seven of the top eight teams in the NFC standings, and while we’re missing the Eagles and 49ers, we have a Super Bowl future on Philadelphia and we like our chances of getting San Francisco down the line. We have a lot of leverage on the three best teams in the NFC North.
Speaking of that leverage: We think markets are overreacting to Aidan Hutchinson’s injury. It’s obviously a big deal, but the Lions are a lot more than Hutchinson. We’ll take this value, increase our Detroit upside, and move on.
Pick: Detroit to win +475. Low confidence.
Pick: Atlanta to win +1600. Low confidence.
NFC South
That Falcons future makes it even easier to take the Bucs in the division. If pressed, we’d say Tampa Bay’s the better team there. Even if they’re not, though, this is a friendly price. Yes, they already lost to the Falcons head-to-head. Yes, the next four games are brutal. But even with all of that, it’s still a friendly price, especially with the Giants, Panthers, and Raiders coming up in the three games after these next four.
Pick: Tampa Bay to win +175. Low confidence.
NFC West
In the West, we’ll take a little shot on the Rams. It’s very unlikely, but they’re only a game and a half back, their win over the 49ers could prove significant, and we kind of like their upcoming schedule, with the Raiders, Dolphins, and Patriots all among the next five teams they play. We wouldn’t be shocked if they get back in it, and even if they get upset this week and it all falls apart, it’s only one unit.
Pick: LA Rams to win +1200. Low confidence.
