MLB Season Win Totals are a Sharper Baseball Bet
By Ted Sevransky
With the baseball regular season less than a week away, it’s crunch time for MLB win-total bettors. I’ve always been a big proponent of season wins as a positive expectation prop bet.
In general, MLB futures are a lousy bet. After the Florida Marlins put a serious hurt on many books when they took money all year, opening as a 100-1 long shot back in 1997, the linesmakers simply stopped offering good odds (which weren’t very good to begin with). Most sportsbooks have the World Series odds rigged so badly that they get to keep one dollar out of every two bet no matter who is alive in late October.
MLB season win totals are another matter entirely, and a far superior wager. There isn’t the same kind of built-in edge for the house, just the standard vig that most proposition bets have, which ranges from 20 cents to 40 cents depending on where you bet.
And it’s easy to have a bettable opinion about a team that doesn’t involve that team making it to the World Series. Many teams will be improved in 2011, but that doesn’t mean that they’ll make enough of a jump to win the whole enchilada.
Betting on those types of teams to win the World Series is a losing proposition, but betting on them to beat their season over/under win total is not. And, just as importantly, you can bet against teams with this wager, an option that World Series futures do not offer.
As a general rule, these Under bets are better than Overs. Injuries can turn a good team bad in a hurry and it’s impossible to predict in March which teams will have half their starters in street clothes by August.
Let’s take a look at a handful of teams that the professional bettors here in Las Vegas have already taken strong opinions with this year.
St Louis Cardinals: Under 84.5
Money has poured in on the Cardinals Under the total right from the get-go, driving this win total down from 87.5 last month. Bettors have been extremely concerned about the unresolved Albert Pujols contract situation hanging over the team all year. They are also concerned with the season-ending injury to last year’s Cy Young runner-up, 20-game winner Adam Wainwright.
The back end of this projected pitching rotation, Jake Westbrook, Jamie Garcia, Kyle Lohse and Kyle McClellan, doesn’t impress very much. The NL Central, as a division, looks tougher this year, with Cincinnati, Chicago, Milwaukee and Houston all looking legitimately improved.
New York Yankees: Under 91.5
At some shops, you’ll have to lay -150 to bet the Yankees Under 91.5 wins right now, because this season win total has seen nothing but one-way action on the Under. The keys here are pitching and age. After C.C. Sabathia at the front of the rotation, the Yanks are going to trot out A.J. Burnett, Phil Hughes, Ivan Nova and “Sweaty’ Freddy Garcia every five days.
Even with their projected mid-season, trade-deadline upgrade, that doesn’t look like a 92-win starting rotation on paper. Jorge Posada is 39. Derek Jeter is 36. Alex Rodriguez is 35. More than half of their starting lineup is on the wrong side of 30, leaving this team vulnerable to the second-half injuries and attrition that have plagued them in every recent non-World Series season.
Atlanta Braves: Over 87.5
You’ll have to shop around to find this number, because the professional bettors in Las Vegas are extremely high on this squad, pushing Atlanta’s season win total up to 88 or 88.5 at many books. But there’s no question that the Vegas wiseguys love the Braves in 2011. Much like the Yankees did after Joe Torre was replaced by Joe Girardi, sharps expect Bobby Cox’s departure to bring positive momentum in the Fredi Gonzalez era.
The Braves have a strong starting rotation, a deep bullpen and a roster loaded with upside potential, especially after bringing veteran power bat Dan Uggla into the mix. The bottom three teams in this division are all squads that will struggle to reach .500, leaving plenty of relatively easy wins for a squad that notched 91 victories a year ago.