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 -4.8% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 3,611 published picks, not including pending futures, and an average return on investment, per pick, of 0.8% across 949 completed high and medium-confidence picks (low confidence picks, these days, are in experimental markets for us). Our ETA to get the overall number back profitable is currently November 5th, the date of a potential World Series Game 7.
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 (in both sports and politics) 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. FiveThirtyEight’s SPI is heavily used in making soccer picks. ESPN’s FPI is heavily used in making NFL picks.
Just MLB futures today. Still not sure when we’ll get back to our other futures portfolios, but hopefully tomorrow (“hopefully tomorrow” is an unfortunate slogan we’ve found ourselves adopting lately).
For unit context: We started the season with 1,040 units available for futures and hedges against those futures. Entering today, we’ve netted 10.74 units of profit, and we have 532.74 units in the bankroll, with 542 units pending.
ALCS
There’s value on the Yankees, who have a tough path but not an insurmountable one this week as clearly the worse team with probably the best single pitcher. Even with a loss tonight, they’ll have a great shot to get through Game 3 down only two games to one, and their ceiling is higher.
With these guys are big vulnerability, we’re hitting this line hard while it’s here. Eighty units.
Pick: New York (AL) to win +165. Medium confidence. x40
World Series
We’ll also put something on the biggest value of the day. Both the Phillies and Padres are undervalued, and while we were hoping on a Padres win last night, since we had slightly more upside on them, we want as much on each one’s back as we can reasonably grab, because in most scenarios, the odds are going to be tighter before the World Series ends.
Pick: Philadelphia to win +260. Medium confidence. x3
Here’s where the portfolio lines up in terms of overall profit/loss in each scenario:
| Winner | Loser | P/L |
| Padres | Yankees | 370.74 |
| Phillies | Yankees | 358.34 |
| Padres | Astros | 354.84 |
| Phillies | Astros | 342.44 |
| Astros | Padres | 40.34 |
| Astros | Phillies | 0.34 |
| Yankees | Padres | -137.26 |
| Yankees | Phillies | -177.26 |
Our hope from here is to bring those AL-winner values up, but we may not be able to do that right away, so for the moment we’re just chasing value. Our ultimate goal remains roughly a 250-unit profit, enough to put us comfortably back profitable all time, and not out of line with our historic MLB futures performances.
