A Few Notes Before the 2008 MLB Season Starts
Posted by Alan Hull on March 24th, 2008
The 2008 Major League Baseball Season is set to kick off tonight in Japan as the Boston Red Sox and Oakland Athletics are set to square off at 3 am PST. I’ll be up watching the game. I really, really do not understand how the scheduling go so badly screwed up that the Red Sox will play games that count, fly back to the states and play more Spring Training games against the Dodgers. Someone screwed up.
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I was lucky enough to spend this past weekend in Las Vegas, thus the low posting for the weekend. My UCLA Bruins pulled through yet again.
Last season, MLB Futures betting activity was pretty inefficient and as a result, I was able to place two $20 bets on the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Cleveland Indians to win the World Series, at 60/1 and 25/1 respectively. I did not win either bet, but I was pretty close (two of the final four teams standing) to a nice pay-out. This season, all inefficiencies seem to have sorted themselves out prior to the season starting and I was unable to find any great bets on Futures. I almost bet Milwaukee Brewers at 15/1, but even then, they’re not that great of a team. Even the Los Angeles Dodgers who opened at 25/1 were now no better than 10/1. Yes, those are better than 8/1, but I’m not crazy about either.
There were still a few areas where inefficiency did exist however and that was in the over/under betting on regular season wins. For one, I was able to bet that the Tampa Bay Rays would win more than 74.5 games, that the San Diego Padres would win less than 85 games and the Seattle Mariners would win less than 84 games. I felt these were the only major inefficiencies this season. In the case of the Rays, I’ll enjoy rooting for them in their search for their first .500 season. The Mariners were vastly overrated last season as their run scored/allowed differential was not as good as their record indicated and with the San Diego Padres, they are losing some key players in Mike Cameron and Milton Bradley and they are replacing them with significantly worse players. In all cases, the payoff is nowhere near last season’s.
If you really want to gamble, the Cincinnati Reds are still listed at 50/1. That might be the biggest opportunity for big money, but I don’t see it happening.
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Evan Longoria gets optioned to AAA. This is probably a wise move. Longoria is ready, but if they keep him in AAA for just one month, they will be able to have another year on him before he becomes a free agent.
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I’ve got something cooking for you all this week. Every year, Baseball Prospectus’s Nate Silver comes up with a list he calls his Top-50 MVPs, where he imagines a scenario where the entire MLB were disbanded and all players were made free agents. If there were a draft with all of the players in baseball available, where each team could control a players’ rights for the next six seasons (the same as the MLB), how might those players go. The article is always a personal favorite of mine from year to year and I will be coming up with a top-30 list, covering the first round of such a draft.
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Play ball.
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