Futures Watch: Week 12

This week:

Oakland, 35:1 (VIP)
Current Record: 39-31
PECOTA Playoff Odds: 71.3%
Tampa Bay, 16.5:1 (5Dimes)
Current Record: 41-29
PECOTA: 70.2%

The Rays beat the Cubs tonight. As I write this, the A's are down 8-0 in Arizona.

I tried to come up with a pretty graph that shows the dramatic effect home-field has had on the AL East race. I failed, but am posting it anyway. The following graph is how many games each team is over .500 on each day of the season. The red line is Boston; the thicker parts are home games, the thin parts are road games. The blue line is, obviously, the Rays.

As you can see, every time the Rays have taken the lead, it's been when they're at home and Boston is on the road. And all Boston's big surges have been at home. So there you have it.

The Rays are on pace to allow 671 runs, which would be 273 fewer runs than last year.

Milwaukee, 75:1 (VIP)
Current Record: 37-33
PECOTA: 29.4%

Propelled by Russ Branyan's 9th HR in 59 ABs, the Brewers won 5-4 tonight.

I don't really understand what VIP has against Milwaukee, it's something. The best I see on them anywhere else is 40:1 at Sportsbook. They have better than a 1 in 76 chance of winning the World Series. This seems pretty obvious.

Seattle, 1000:1 (VIP)
250:1 to win the AL West (VIP)
Current Record: 25-46
PECOTA: 0.007%

Don't bet on these, obviously. I just wanted to take a second to point out that the Mariners are on pace to win 57 games. Steve Phillips predicted they would win 92 games. Steve Phillips is on pace to be off by 35 games in predicting how many games a team would win in a 162 game season. That is extremely hard to do.