Top 10 Futures Odds

I've come up with something of a formula to find the best futures odds on various sites. The details are uninteresting, but it involves Baseball Prospectus' Playoff Odds, and odds from four different sites (sportsinteraction.com, sportsbetting.com, bodog.com, vip.com).

Basically I take what percentage chance BP thinks a team has of winning the WS, and the % chance the four sites think they have, and compare it to the best odds that can be found on those four sites.

What this system is designed to do is to find lines that probably haven't been updated as recently as they should been. The lines at the top of this list will generally a) not reflect how the team has played in the last week and/or b) be significantly different from the lines at the other three sites.

Here's the latest top 10 (BP Odds through Wednesday's games, lines as of Thursday morning):

The Dodgers are at the top of this list because, as of this morning, they had a 67% chance of making the playoffs according to PECOTA. One would expect a team with that chance to be between 12:1 and 15:1, rather than 20:1. In reality they are 14:1, 18:1, 18:1 and obviously 20:1. I think that 20:1 is pretty good.

Pittsburgh and Baltimore are on this list because VIP has lines for them that are very, very different from the other three sites. I would not bet on either of these teams (because they suck), but that doesn't make VIP's lines any less wrong.

VIP also has a weird line for Colorado, but that one is a little more interesting. Coming into today the Rockies had about a 6% chance of making the playoffs, and were between 55:1 and 75:1 on the other three sites, while they are 150:1 on VIP. I don't know why VIP's lines are so weird, but that one is certainly very out of place, and is probably worth a small wager. Stranger things have happened.

Oakland, which was 60:1 a couple days ago, as noted in my last post, has moved to 40:1 but is still a decent value.

I'll try to have at least a post a week with the top futures lines for the rest of the year. If you'd like to receive weekly updates on the top futures lines, please e-mail me at jnwheat@emory.edu.