World Collection odds: How markets are transferring as playoff race heats up
From Sam Panayotovich
FOX Sports Betting Analyst
booking Major League Baseball Future bets can be quite a balancing act in the last week of the regular season.
As teams battle for a position or actual berth in the postseason, bettors look for the betting value on teams they believe may have a chance to race for a pennant or World Series title.
“I like the Blue Jays when they come in!” will announce your buddy.
With four teams battling for two wildcard spots in the American League in the past few days, the numbers race gets even more hectic.
“We only have a handful of games left for each team,” said Chris Bennett, sports betting manager for Circa Sports. “If all the playoff teams were decided at this point, I would probably book the World Series and the Pennants at a slightly lower theoretical hold percentage than I am currently. I have to put in a bit of push-in because of” this uncertainty, since it is currently there are more than 10 teams that could reach the playoffs. So that’s part of what I do to protect myself. “
“So late in the season I have to watch the games go on. I check the results on my phone or at home on my computer. So if the Blue Jays look like they’re going to beat the Yankees” Tonight I might want to make a move before the game even ends to advance. “
The checks and balances don’t stop until the field is virtually complete.
Top 10 Teams Most Likely to Win the World Series, by FOX Betting Odds *:
Dodgers: +320 (wager $ 10 for a total of $ 42)
Astros: +475 (wager $ 10 to win a total of $ 57.50)
Rays: +600 (wager $ 10 to win a total of $ 70)
Giants: +650 (wager $ 10 to win a total of $ 75)
White Sox: +800 (wager $ 10 to win a total of $ 90)
Brewers: +850 (wager $ 10 to win a total of $ 95)
Yankees: +1200 (wager $ 10 to win a total of $ 130)
Braves: +1400 (wager $ 10 for a total of $ 150)
Cardinals: +2200 (bet $ 10 to win a total of $ 230)
Red Sox +2200 (bet $ 10 to win a total of $ 230)
* Odds as of 9/30/2021 at 5:00 p.m. ET
“If it’s Saturday or Sunday and one team is about to be eliminated, I only have odds on both teams as if they both won, so it doesn’t matter,” said Bennett.
“It’s a balancing act. I would hate to do a future book that didn’t make me feel good about the opportunities we were offering or that we weren’t very competitive in the market place. It definitely is a challenge.”
Shifting future numbers every day is just a small piece of a big cake. Most sports betting has future liabilities that have accumulated over weeks or months and no liability is the same. It all depends on the positions a baseball bookmaker like Bennett held against a particular team at any given time.
After all, prices are almost always different in every store. One sports betting company could fight the Yankees to win the World Series while another could cry badly when a team like the Brewers wins it all because of an avalanche of money written in the first few months. It all depends.
“The Giants are the worst result for us in the World Series market, but the Cardinals have gotten pretty bad too,” said Bennett. “They’re probably about as bad. San Francisco has exceeded expectations from the start and St. Louis has just had this crazy winning streak. The Cardinals had very good chances three weeks ago and now they’re in the playoffs.
“We have some customers who have some obscenely good bets on this year’s Cardinals,” added Bennett. “We make fair numbers and sometimes it goes like this. It’s baseball. All you have to do is make it, and you have a legitimate chance of winning a championship. It’s not like the NBA. There are too much variance and “chance” in baseball.
“The good news is that only one of them can move up to the NLCS so I’ll be able to work with it a bit. I’m not entirely happy with our positions, but it’s not that they’re on a collision course.” meet deep in the playoffs. “
This recent Cardinals run reminded Bennett of a similar situation 10 years ago. It’s a different déjà vu this time though, as he was on the other side of the counter for that scorching St. Louis finish.
“In 2011 the Cardinals beat Rangers in the World Series,” recalls Bennett. “I remember it vividly from betting on it. It was the longest shot I’d ever hit in my sports betting life. They won the World Series by 250 to 1 and the World Series by 125 to 1 pennant by about eight or nine games remaining in the regular season.
“They were thought dead. They were a few games behind the Braves, but the Braves only had one epic breakdown at the end of the season and the Cardinals got in. They kept winning and the Braves kept losing. And the rest is history.”
Speaking of history, there’s no rivalry more famous among the majors than the Boston Red Sox versus the New York Yankees. And there’s a good chance the two longtime rivals will meet in a do-or-die tilt early next week to face the Tampa Bay Rays in the divisional round.
Bennett said that Sox (+2200 to win the World Series on FOX Bet, so a $ 10 bet would win a total of $ 230) versus Yanks (+1200 on FOX Bet; bet $ 10, to win a total of $ 130) the best one-of-a-kind would be for handle.
“That’s a pretty good situation because it’s a showcase event this Tuesday,” said Bennett. “And if it’s Gerrit Cole versus Chris Sale, they’re two of the best pitchers in baseball, so it’s even more convincing. This matchup would be a lot of action because people love to bet big games with big names.”
I asked Bennett about the uniqueness of baseball playoff betting because I couldn’t quite tell. In professional basketball, bettors love the zigzag theory. In March Madness, people love outsiders who can win straight away. Hockey is all about the hot goalkeeper. Rely on Tom Brady in professional football.
So what’s unique about playoff baseball?
“One thing that I think about right away is that people really want to be ‘under’ in these playoff games,” said Bennett. “They usually have the best pitchers and for certain teams in the Midwest and Northeast it is October so the weather is cold and the shooting conditions are not the best.
“There was a World Series game between the Royals and the Mets in New York,” recalls Bennett. “The Mets had great pitching and the Royals had a great bullpen. The total was 6 and the Unders were -120 or so.
“The market sometimes goes overboard and just hits the ‘under’. Some people just don’t want to go ‘over’ in playoff games with good pitchers. I think the market is pretty strong so you can’t just play these games blindly betting ‘over’, but that’s one thing that has been a consistent trend over the years – people’s desire to bet ‘under’. “
Earlier in this column, I mentioned that baseball bettors are looking for a team that could potentially take a run. You’ve probably been waiting for advice on this. Luckily for you, I asked Bennett.
He knows these teams and their relative worth better than anyone.
“The Rays (+600 at FOX Bet) and the Brewers (+850 at FOX Bet) are easily underestimated,” said Bennett. “Tampa Bay doesn’t have the starting pitcher people love, but they’re just so good they can thrive without Tyler Glasnow. Their line-up is real top-down, good defense. Good base run.
“The Brewers have three really, really good starting mugs. It’s kind of prototypical playoff team building. If these guys can line up and develop their potential, they’re dangerous. You saw when Milwaukee faced the Giants last month how much the market respects the Brewers. “
That is true even after Devin Williams hit a wall and most likely made himself unavailable for the postseason; for Bennett it’s more about Milwaukee’s Pitching Big Three:
“As good as the Giants (+650 at FOX Bet) were and all that, those single series of games told you that the Brewers might be better. If they can get Burnes and Woodruff and Peralta all in line, watch out. The way could work well for the Brewers. “
Sam Panayotovich is a sports betting analyst for FOX Sports and NESN. He previously worked for WGN Radio, NBC Sports and VSiN. He’ll likely play against your favorite team. Follow him on Twitter @spshoot.
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