MLB First Pitch
By Bodog
Let the Pro Baseball season begin!
It may still be winter across most of the United States and Canada, but it?s already spring in Florida and Arizona. You can tell by the unmistakable sound of the crack of the bat. Exhibition baseball begins Tuesday with three games ? only one with MLB odds attached, since the other two involve major league versus college teams. But the fact that we?re now betting on preseason baseball speaks volumes about the explosion of online gambling.
Handicappers have been waiting for this moment for nearly four months. You?re not going to find a simpler sport on which to gamble; baseball is a set of discrete events, very mechanical in nature and relatively easy to analyze using statistics. Followers of this sport are obsessed with numbers. Good thing for us the betting public is invariably obsessed with the wrong numbers, like how many wins or saves a pitcher has, or batting average. Sabermetricians have shown many a sharp handicapper the way to the bank, and no, it doesn?t start in your mother?s basement. The more baseball ?purists? rail against newfangled stats like xFIP and wOBA, the more money we make at their expense.
We can use some of the newer metrics to take advantage of the MLB futures odds, as well. The New York Yankees are the defending World Series champions, and they?re favored at 11-4 to defend their championship. The team that the Yankees beat, the Philadelphia Phillies, is next at 6-1, tied with the Boston Red Sox. New York had by far the best record of any of these three teams last year at 103-59, but as any sabermetrician will tell you, past wins are not a very good indicator of future success. Run differential is better, and the team with the biggest run differential last year was the Los Angeles Dodgers at +169 (seven more runs than New York). They?re available at the bargain price of 14-1.
You can use run differential as a quick and dirty way of evaluating a team?s actual level of play versus its perceived level of play, which is what value handicapping is all about. But spring training is also a time for evaluating all those offseason roster changes. None of the 30 teams in the majors is going to have exactly the same season as last year. Even if they all stuck with the same rosters, players get either better or worse with age.
No team has made a bigger splash during the offseason than Seattle. They had a relatively successful 85-77 season last year, their first under new general manager Jack Zduriencik. That?s 24 more victories than the Mariners had in 2008; as a result, the M?s racked up 11.91 units of profit in 2009. They put up those numbers despite a negative run differential of ?52, which would normally be a red flag for Seattle?s chances this season, but this isn?t the same team:
In: Cliff Lee, Chone Figgins, Milton Bradley, Eric Byrnes, Casey Kotchman, Brandon League
Out: Adrian Beltre, Kenji Johjima, Russell Branyan, Brandon Morrow, Carlos Silva
The Mariners also signed ace Felix Hernandez to a five-year contract extension worth a reported $78 million. Starting pitching is the No. 1 concern of GMs and handicappers alike, and the addition of Lee gives the M?s two of the very best pitchers in the game today. But is it enough to make Seattle a World Series bargain at 16-1? The blogheads at Lookout Landing projected the new-look Mariners to win 88.5 games, a half-game more than the defending AL West-champion Los Angeles Angels at 15-1. But then the M?s signed Erik Bedard to a one-year deal. Bedard was worth 1.9 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) last year according to FanGraphs, even while making only 15 starts because of injury, so he could be the difference in Seattle winning the division.
The Phillies, meanwhile, no longer have Lee (6.0 projected WAR for 2010) at the top of the rotation. But they do have Roy Halladay (6.4 projected WAR), who came over from the Toronto Blue Jays as part of that blockbuster four-team deal. By the way, Halladay then signed a three-year $60-million contract extension with Philadelphia. The sound of hearts breaking in Toronto is almost as loud as the crack of the bat.
By Bodog
Let the Pro Baseball season begin!
It may still be winter across most of the United States and Canada, but it?s already spring in Florida and Arizona. You can tell by the unmistakable sound of the crack of the bat. Exhibition baseball begins Tuesday with three games ? only one with MLB odds attached, since the other two involve major league versus college teams. But the fact that we?re now betting on preseason baseball speaks volumes about the explosion of online gambling.
Handicappers have been waiting for this moment for nearly four months. You?re not going to find a simpler sport on which to gamble; baseball is a set of discrete events, very mechanical in nature and relatively easy to analyze using statistics. Followers of this sport are obsessed with numbers. Good thing for us the betting public is invariably obsessed with the wrong numbers, like how many wins or saves a pitcher has, or batting average. Sabermetricians have shown many a sharp handicapper the way to the bank, and no, it doesn?t start in your mother?s basement. The more baseball ?purists? rail against newfangled stats like xFIP and wOBA, the more money we make at their expense.
We can use some of the newer metrics to take advantage of the MLB futures odds, as well. The New York Yankees are the defending World Series champions, and they?re favored at 11-4 to defend their championship. The team that the Yankees beat, the Philadelphia Phillies, is next at 6-1, tied with the Boston Red Sox. New York had by far the best record of any of these three teams last year at 103-59, but as any sabermetrician will tell you, past wins are not a very good indicator of future success. Run differential is better, and the team with the biggest run differential last year was the Los Angeles Dodgers at +169 (seven more runs than New York). They?re available at the bargain price of 14-1.
You can use run differential as a quick and dirty way of evaluating a team?s actual level of play versus its perceived level of play, which is what value handicapping is all about. But spring training is also a time for evaluating all those offseason roster changes. None of the 30 teams in the majors is going to have exactly the same season as last year. Even if they all stuck with the same rosters, players get either better or worse with age.
No team has made a bigger splash during the offseason than Seattle. They had a relatively successful 85-77 season last year, their first under new general manager Jack Zduriencik. That?s 24 more victories than the Mariners had in 2008; as a result, the M?s racked up 11.91 units of profit in 2009. They put up those numbers despite a negative run differential of ?52, which would normally be a red flag for Seattle?s chances this season, but this isn?t the same team:
In: Cliff Lee, Chone Figgins, Milton Bradley, Eric Byrnes, Casey Kotchman, Brandon League
Out: Adrian Beltre, Kenji Johjima, Russell Branyan, Brandon Morrow, Carlos Silva
The Mariners also signed ace Felix Hernandez to a five-year contract extension worth a reported $78 million. Starting pitching is the No. 1 concern of GMs and handicappers alike, and the addition of Lee gives the M?s two of the very best pitchers in the game today. But is it enough to make Seattle a World Series bargain at 16-1? The blogheads at Lookout Landing projected the new-look Mariners to win 88.5 games, a half-game more than the defending AL West-champion Los Angeles Angels at 15-1. But then the M?s signed Erik Bedard to a one-year deal. Bedard was worth 1.9 WAR (Wins Above Replacement) last year according to FanGraphs, even while making only 15 starts because of injury, so he could be the difference in Seattle winning the division.
The Phillies, meanwhile, no longer have Lee (6.0 projected WAR for 2010) at the top of the rotation. But they do have Roy Halladay (6.4 projected WAR), who came over from the Toronto Blue Jays as part of that blockbuster four-team deal. By the way, Halladay then signed a three-year $60-million contract extension with Philadelphia. The sound of hearts breaking in Toronto is almost as loud as the crack of the bat.
