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 –2.1% when weighting by confidence (1 for low, 2 for medium, 3 for high) across 7,800 published picks, not including pending futures; and an average return on investment, per pick, of +2.2% across 2,311 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.
Active markets today: Single-game MLB and MLB futures. Here’s the history on each and how we approach them:
MLB moneylines: Last year, we finished the season up about 8%. We’re 167–144–4 so far this year, down 9.79 units. We’ve made a few pivots over the course of the year, and our latest has finally flamed out. We’re making another one today. We’ll explain it below.
MLB futures: We have a great history with these, though the last two years we’ve only made small profits. In both 2019 and 2021, I believe we recorded better than a 50% ROI. In 2020, we lost about 25% of our portfolio. We began this season with 750 units in our portfolio, with the intent being to spend 500 of those over the regular season and keep 250 in reserve for the postseason and/or hedging & arbitrage opportunities. We place two medium confidence bets most weekdays until sometime later this month when the scenarios become more specific.
Washington @ New York (NL)
The idea behind Heat Index was that we thought the markets were undervaluing how hot and cold different teams were. We’d seen evidence of this in previous seasons. With Heat Index coming down to earth…are markets overvaluing this? We’re not using the old formula here. We’re using perception. It’s our opinion that if you asked most baseball fans who the hottest team in the league is, they’d point towards the Mets, and that theories about playoff urgency would further inflate Mets prices.
Pick: Washington to win +148. Low confidence. (Herz and Quintana must start.)
World Series
The D-Backs are flirting with disaster, but that can create value. Meanwhile, there’s positive value available on the Astros, and they had recently slipped into unprofitable territory for us. This gets them back to a profitable scenario.
Pick: Houston to win +900. Medium confidence.
Pick: Arizona to win +2400. Medium confidence.
