Olney on Washburn

So, here I am yesterday, innocently reading Buster Olney's chat. Just interested in the latest trade rumors and such. But then he says this:

Sal (Connecticut): Hey Buster, why all the hate on the Yankees staff and bullpen when they have been very good especially the bullpen which has been exceptional and the Yankees have only lost 1 game when handing the ball over to the bullpen with a lead after 6 innings. 1!

Buster Olney: Sal: I have no idea what you are talking about. I haven't been critical of the Yankees' staff lately; it's the offense that I've been critical of. BTW: The Yankees are taking a look at Jarrod Washburn, who has a career ERA of 2.82 ERA in Yankee Stadium. He'd fit them perfectly, for 2008 and 2009 -- he had a sub-3.00 ERA in June and has similar numbers in July. We'll see what happens.

I'll get to the Yankee Stadium thing in a second. The June/July thing has been covered at USS Mariner, but it's worth going over again:

Rapidly improving 33-year old pitcher, or guy whose ERA has bounced around because five starts is a really small sample? You decide.

As for the other issue:

Jacob (Brooklyn): Do you really think Washburn is a good fit with the Yankees because he has a good ERA in 38.1 innings at Yankee Stadium?

Buster Olney: Jacob: I think it's a factor they will look at -- he's a lefty flyball pitcher who changes speeds well and has a nice post-season history. To me, he's a perfect fit for them, the way that George Sherrill makes complete sense for the Brewers or the Angels.

For the record, Washburn career @NYY: 38.1 IP, 5HR, 9BB, 16K, 2.82 ERA. 1-4 record.

So now we're switching the argument. It's not because he's pitched well in New York, it's because he's a good fit for the ballpark. Okay, I'll buy that. But we can't just stop there, of course.

Jarrod Washburn, career postseason: 36.2 IP, 8HR (yikes), 14BB, 21K, 4.91 ERA. 1-3 record. So what we're really saying here is that he "has a nice post-season history."

I just don't understand why people insist on complicating things. The Yankees are considering trading for Washburn. Why? Because Sidney Ponson is currently the #5 starter. Jarrod Washburn is better than Sidney Ponson. That's it. That's the reason. It's really not necessary to whip out all this meaningless, anecdotal evidence to explain their interest. It only serves to weaken the argument, by drawing attention away from what actually matters.

This Week's Links (6/16-6/20)

I don't even want to talk about what happened yesterday. Cruel timing.

Even Wall Street was watching Tiger on Monday.

Does it make sense to take third when down multiple runs in the 9th?

Everybody's talking about Seattle's GM search--USS Mariner, Beyond the Box Score, and Stark.

"Kaz: Brings the heat"

This is the height of stupidity:


I am sick of linking to everything Posnanski writes, but: on Ricciardi, Kobe vs. Jordan, and Tiger.

Fun with screen grabs.

What is Jerry Manuel thinking when he says this?

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.

An Unfortunate Oversight

"First Manager To 'Leave Post' Odds", March 28:

Is it obvious enough yet?

McLaren was definitely the best one here. Widely respected baseball men expected them to win 92 games, and they're on pace to lose 108. We nailed that one, they just canned a different guy.

But after that, how'd we miss Randolph? The manager of a team that blew a seven game lead in 18 days, which was expected to win 90+ games this year, in the biggest media market in the world. The fact that he got fired when they weren't even doing that poorly (34-35) only accentuates the point; there wasn't much margin for error.

Oh well. At least they handled it professionally.

Somebody's Gonna Be Wrong

Comparing preseason predictions from various sources is a lot of fun, and also a pretty good way to get a feel for what's expected from teams from various sections of the media. What I've done here is take predictions from a few different places- 5 ESPN analysts in their season preview, three Yahoo! guys, the SI staff, Joe Sheehan (AL, NL), and PECOTA- and find the biggest discrepancies bewteen win totals for each team. The first largest differences are below, followed by a discussion of why there's such a lack of consensus, and who looks to be correct.

By coincidence, this ended up being all AL teams, which is fine by me.

Seattle Mariners
Average: 86.2
High: Steve Phillips (ESPN), 92
Low: PECOTA, 75

Do you think Phillips can spell "Pythagorean"? I don't.

That being said, 75 is really low. The PECOTA projection does come with something of a disclaimer, since it has Ichiro hitting .303/.346/.384. In 4774 career ABs, Suzuki has hit .333/.379/.437; this is his age 34 season, but thats a huge drop, and Ichiro has outperformed his PECOTA pretty much every year.

Still, even if we bump PECOTA's projection up to 77, that's a 15 win difference. And this is far from an isolated incident. The four ESPN guys (Stark, Kurkjian, Olney, and Phillips) and the three Yahoo! guys (Henson, Brown, and Passan) have the winning an average of 90 games. Sheehan, Law, and various computer projections predict an average of 79 victories.

They won 88 games last year, while being outscored by 19 runs. The high predictions employ the "88 wins + Bedard" logic. The others are starting with a baseline of 79, and giving them a boost for Bedard but factoring in some regression for their aging lineup. I don't think it's particularly hard to figure out who to side with here.

Tampa Bay Rays
Average: 77.3
High: PECOTA, 88
Low: Steve Henson (Yahoo!), 72

The thing you have to love about PECOTA is that it's 100% unbiased. When it runs the numbers and comes up with 88 wins for a team that's never won 70, it doesn't adjust that to something that seems a little more reasonable. This paid off with the White Sox prediction last year; considering its history of success (not limited to that one example, obviously), the extreme predictions for Seattle and Tampa are hard to ignore.

I don't really know who this Steve Henson fellow is, but that's okay- he's got some wacky predictions, which are always appreciated. Here is his analysis on the Rays:

"The Rays are improving but are still middle-school level to the Red Sox graduate students."

This is a little over the top, but I think that's the mainstream consensus. Personally, I have no idea how many games this team is going to win (although I'd certainly take the over on 72). There's no big Pythag gap here- last year their expected record was 67-95, and their actual record was 66-96. Three things are causing the huge expected jump- a vastly improved defense, additions to the bullpen, and the development of young players. They were a horrible fielding team last year, but PECOTA expects them to be a little above average this season. The biggest upgrade is going from Brendan Harris (-19 in Dewan's system) embarrassing himself at short to Jason Barlett's +18 glove. The also have Upton finally spending a full year in center, and the (eventual) addition of Longoria to the lineup will allow Iwamura to slide over to second.

Combine that with the addition of Matt Garza, and the progress of Kazmir, Shields, Sonnanstine and Co., and it's easy to see that their run prevention will be much improved. PECOTA has a team that allowed 944 runs last year decreasing that by a whopping 226 runs. Without looking it up, I'm going to go ahead and assume that that'd be the largest reduction in the history of baseball; that's about three months worth of runs for the Giants' offense.

Henson's prediction of 72 wins for the Rays is insanely low; 88 is high, but not that high. It's hard to both see and quantify these internal improvements- switching up defensive alignments, young players improving, old ones regressing- which is why PECOTA is so far off from the general consensus.

Texas Rangers
Average: 73.0
High: Joe Sheehan (Baseball Prospectus), 80
Low: Steve Phillips, 64

This is not a fair fight.

I watched Phillips' "analysis" of the Rangers on their ESPN season preview page, and I must say, he didn't really enlighten me. He doesn't think Millwood and Padilla are top of the rotation starters, which is reasonable. He goes on to explain that Texas is going to have to outslug their opponents. I don't know how he came to that 64 number (he probably doesn't either), but we should remember that they do get to play almost 60 games against that increasingly horrific division.

Sheehan is bullish on their offense; he has Texas scoring 840 runs, which is 60 higher than PECOTA. He seems to be high on Blalock who absolutely tore it up (.313/.405/.656) after returning after missing three months last year. Because of his disappointing '05 and '06 campaigns, PECOTA is very down on Blalock with a projected .263/.331/.436 line, so that's probably causing a decent amount of a difference. Because of how unique he is, Josh Hamilton is obviously a hard guy to find comparisons for; PECOTA has him going from .292/.368/.554 last season to .283/.349/.481 this year. This makes some sense, since last year was in the easier league and a better hitters park, but it still seems low. In writing this paragraph, I have convinced myself that the Rangers are going to score a whole lot of runs this season, and certainly win a lot more than 64 games.

Baltimore Orioles
Average: 63.6
High: Steve Henson, 70
Low: Buster Olney (ESPN), 56

Olney does love the extreme predictions- 49 wins for the Nationals last year is one I'll never forget. This one is much more sane though. They have a decent outfield, but they forgot about the whole "shortstop" thing, and that is a truly awful rotation in an impossible division. Our new friend Henson thinks they will win just two less games than the Rays; now that is a bet I'd like to make.

Toronto Blue Jays
Average: 86.2
High: Joe Sheehan, 91
Low: PECOTA, 78

This is very interesting- a third huge discrepancy in the East, but this time between two "people" that look at things similarly. These are the only two sets of projections that also offer RS/RA, which is helpful. PECOTA has Toronto at 762/775, while Sheehan predicts 761/676. So it's pretty clear where the disagreement is here.

This may be partially caused by different opinions on their defense- they are good, it's just a question of how good. But I think it's mostly their top 3 starters. Burnett can opt out of his deal at the end of the year (thanks, Keith). PECOTA has him throwing 185 innings with a 3.83 ERA; it's worth noting that in his last contract year he threw 209 innings with a 3.44 ERA in 2005, his last contract year. That's certainly too optimistic of an expectation, but it's been shown that players perform better in contract years, and I don't believe PECOTA takes that into account. So that's something to keep in mind. Staying healthy is the first step, obviously.

PECOTA has Halladay at a 4.06 ERA, which is certainly conservative, as his career ERA is 3.63- I'm assuming that's caused by his relatively weak peripherals.

Finally, PECOTA is very low in McGowan, with a 4.60 ERA. Obviously, it hasn't been reading The Baseball Analysts. Beyond that intriguing article, I've read a few other things on McGowan. I think he's expected to improve on last year's 4.08 ERA, and certainly beat his PECOTA projection. So yeah, it looks like Toronto will have some excellent run prevention this year, as one can reasonably expect their top three starters to be significantly better than what PECOTA suggests.

First Manager To "Leave Post" Odds

BetUS has put up odds on which MLB manager has been the first to "leave his post". They are listed below in their entirety.

The maximum wager on these is $10, so only the longshots are really worth looking at.

I really like McLaren at 40:1 here. People have high expectations for this team which are, well, misplaced. The Angels' injury issues have only given them more hope. If they get off to a bad start, McLaren isn't under contract after this year- he could be the first to go.

Some of these make very little sense. How is Wedge 16:1? His odds should be switched with McLaren's.

LaRussa is 40:1 because he's *Tony LaRussa* but, as the prop clearly states, he doesn't necessarily have to get fired. I could see him potentially stepping down at some point. It's not likely, but they're a better chance of that happening than Trey Hillman "leaving his post".

Bruce Bochy's contract runs through 2009, but I don't see how the manager of a team that bad has such high odds. Sabean has to blame somebody, doesn't he?

Black at 35:1 also seems decent, but nothing else really jumps out at me. Maybe some of you have further insight on the manager of your favorite team.

Update: Further insight on the McLaren odds from Sheehan's chat:

"Those are great odds. He doesn't have a track record or a name, expectations are high and unlikely to be met, and the GM is playing for his own job.

Good bet. Er, if gambling were legal."

Look Out For Seattle!

ESPN now has their AL team capsules linked on the MLB page. Each capsule has five anlalysts' predictions on how many games that team will win. For example:


88 Wins + Bedard = 92!! The man does have a history with this team, I suppose. It's the predictions of the first three that really surprise me. Law's "voice of reason" title has never been more appropriate.

Much more on these after the basketball this weekend.

This Week's Links (2/18-2/22)

The St. Louis under won, 39-14 (74%). Arizona is up now; we're going alphabetically the rest of the way.

Baseball Prospectus 2008 comes out on Monday. Probably the best $13.17 you'll spend this year. Unless Xavier (80:1 at BetUS) wins it all.

Very old, but this Russell Westbrook dunk against Cal was absolutely filthy.

Baseball Musings predicts how many R/G each team will score in '08. A commenter alertly notes, "Looks like another long year for Matt Cain."

STF interviews SI's Luke Winn.

Ozzie Guillen, being awesome:

‘’Then if you’re a nice guy, they are going to treat you the same way. [Expletive] it, be an ####### then. I would rather be an ####### winning than be a nice guy [expletive] losing. Give me an ####### who can win, don’t give me a nice guy who can [expletive] lose.’"

ESPN jumped the gun on the UAB-Memphis game. How does that happen? Is it really so difficult to wait two minutes?

Silver adjusts PECOTA for strength of schedule. Seattle's prediction descends even lower. 85 wins. Right.

With Leather was on the foxnews.com front page. Also from WL:

"Seriously, if I said that Raul Ibanez could run down a routine fly ball, I'd punch myself in the face, because I'd be lying."

Derek Jeter: a below average fielder!? Man, what are they smoking down at Penn?

2008 MLB Wins Over/Unders

Update 2: Join the contest.

Update: BetUS has now posted totals as well.

BetCRIS, which is now my favorite website, has posted over/unders for each MLB team's 2008 wins. Vegas Watch will have much more coverage of this in the coming weeks (to the extent that I ever *cover* anything). For now, I will just post the totals, although I did have some fun with the formats.

Arizona- 86.5
Atlanta- 86
Baltimore- 65
Boston- 94
Chicago C- 87.5
Chicago W- 76
Cincinnati- 76.5
Cleveland- 91
Colorado- 83
Detroit- 93.5
Florida- 68.5
Houston- 73.5
Kansas City- 73.5
LA Angels- 92
LA Dodgers- 87.5
Milwaukee- 84
Minnesota- 73.5
NY Mets- 92.5
NY Yankees- 94
Oakland- 74
Philadelphia- 88
Pittsburgh- 68.5
San Diego- 85
San Francisco- 72
Seattle- 85
St. Louis- 77
Tampa Bay- 72
Texas- 75
Toronto- 84
Washington- 71.5

Edit: New poll is up. Let's see how many of these things we can get through before the season starts.

Crazy Computer Hates Mariners

The 2007 Seattle Mariners won 88 games, finishing second in the AL West. In the offseason they added Erik Bedard and Carlos Silva to a rotation that saw Jeff Weaver, Horacio Ramirez, Cha Seung Baek, and Ryan Feierabend combine to make 68 starts last year while compiling a 6.49 ERA.

They did lose a few guys from last year's team, including Jose Guillen (signed with Royals), Ben Broussard (traded to Rangers), Jeff Weaver (unsigned), and George Sherill (Bedard trade). But the additions to the rotation clearlymake up for these losses. In other words, Steve Phillips will likely predict that the Mariners win 90 games.

Baseball Prospectus' projection system, PECOTA, has them winning 73 games.

The issue is not their pitching, which PECOTA has as a little better than league average. The problem is they are projected to score 691 runs, which is the lowest number in the AL.

How does an 88-win team seemingly improve, yet become a 73-win team? A few possibilities:

Pythagorean Record
This is the obvious one. Seattle was outscore by 19 runs last year, and their third-order record was just 78- 84. If you are setting the baseline on the 2008 team at 88, you are wildly overestimating their true talent level.

Ichiro
PECOTA has Ichiro hitting .304/.346/.384, for a VORP of just 14.7. This is a guy with a career line of .333/.379/.437, whose average VORP over the last three years has been 48.1. PECOTA is consistently down on Ichiro (last year it had him at .310/.353/.400; he hit .351/.396/.431), so you have to think they are being unfairly docked a few wins here.

Age
The average age of the 30 MLB teams last year was about 28. Weighted for playing time (from here), the average age of the 2008 Mariners' lineup is 30.3, with Ichiro, Ibanez, Sexson, Vidro Johjima, and Wilkerson all on the wrong side of 30. This is another thing that goes unnoticed by he mainstream media. There is a significant difference between going from 28 to 29, and 30 to 31, and I think that is part of the reason their projection is as low as it is.

Defense
Seattle was 27th in the majors last year with a defensive efficiency of .678. This also goes back to their age- it is likely that they will be just as bad, if not worse, this year, as everybody is a year older, and they traded away a very strong defender in Jones.

73 wins seems a little extreme, but I think a projection of around 76 is entirely reasonable. Either way, articles like this are sure to be written, but we'll have to wait and see if there's a post like this come September.

Bill Bavasi And Pythagoras Are Not Friends

After weeks of buildup, the Orioles and Mariners finally completed the deal that sends Erik Bedard to Seattle, with Adam Jones, George Sherrill, Chris Tillman, Tony Butler, and Kam Mickolio heading to Baltimore.

Unlike the Tejada trade, or giving billions to Torii Hunter, the problem with this trade (from Seattle's standpoint) isn't the player they are receiving. Although there are concerns about his stamina/injuries (he's never thrown 200 innings), it's hard to argue with Bedard's 2007 numbers- a 3.16 ERA, and 221 Ks in 182 innings. PECOTA projects him as the third best pitcher in the AL, with a VORP of 42.2, behind only Sabathia and Beckett.

Bedard is very good. The thing is, so is Adam Jones. Last year, at the age of 21, Jones hit .314/.382/.586. He also happens to play CF, and is excellent defensively. Even with all the megadeals, he is likely the best prospect (if he can still be considered one) to change teams this offseason.

The addition of Bedard obviously helps, but losing Jones cancels out a significant portion of that boost. With Ichiro already in center, Seattle goes from having Jones as their right fielder (projected VORP of 21.4, "Very Good" in RF) to having Brad Wilkerson (projected VORP of 4.1, "Average" in RF). So unlike the Santana trade, the Mariners are giving up a significant amount of 2008 value in order to acquire an ace. They're also losing something in giving up Sherrill, who has held lefties to a .167/.227/.291 line in his career.

But still, Seattle is improving their 2008 roster. And since they won 88 games last year, and play in a relatively weak (and small) division, there is a lot of value in a marginal improvement of 2-3 wins.

If they really were an 88-win team in '07, this would be a decent argument. But (and I'm obviously not breaking any new ground here, as Law, Sheehan, USSM, and many others have already discussed this) they weren't. They were outscored by 19 runs- their Pythag record was 79-83. If you're going from 88 to 91 wins, and significantly increasing your chances of finishing ahead of the Angels and reaching the postseason, this is a defensible trade*. If, as is the case here, you're going from something like 82 wins to 85, and only marginally upping your odds of playing in October, it's not.

The predictive value of a team's RS/RA is not a complicated concept. Seattle scored 19 fewer runs than they allowed in 2007; they were a very average team. It seems absurd for a GM to lack a fundamental understanding of how good his current roster is, but that is the reason this trade went down.

*Maybe. I think this would be a very interesting debate. I kind of find it hard to believe that the next six years of Adam Jones, three really cheap and three under market, aren't worth more then the next two of Erik Bedard, slightly under market, whether you extend him or not. Throw in Sherrill and Tillman, and I just have a hard time seeing it. By the way, what do the Orioles want with Sherrill? 31-year old lefty specialists who throw 45 innings a year really don't have that much value on a team that's going to lose 95 games. Flip him in a trade, I guess?

Photo: amateurmusicians.net.

BP Playoff Graphs

Today I thought I'd take a look at the graphs of a few teams' playoff chances throughout the season, according to Baseball Prospectus' Postseason Odds.

Each of these graphs begin on May 1, and are through Saturday's games. The y-axis is simply their % chance of making the playoffs on each day.

Seattle Mariners

On June 23 (point 1) it wasn't looking very good for the Mariners, as they were 37-33 (decent) but eight games behind the first place Angels. Then they got hot, going 17-6 over their next 23 games to get within a game of the Angels, and increase their playoff odds to almost 47% (point 2).

Then things went bad, as the Mariners went on a seven game losing streak. This could have completely destroyed their playoff hopes, but at the end of the skid they were only four games back of LAA, although their % had dipped to 24% (point 3). Since then they've been solid, going 6-2, and are still very much in the race.

New York Yankees

A lot was made of the Yankees' early season struggles, but by June 18 (point 1) they were actually in decent shape considering the circumstances, at 35-32 with a 35% shot at the postseason.

The proceeded to lose nine of their next 11 games, dropping to 37-41 with a % under 10% (point 2). Luckily for them, their schedule since the ASB has consisted of the Devil Rays, Blue Jays, Royals, Orioles, and White Sox. And they have taken advantage of this going 23-9, and bringing their playoff % up to almost 50%.

Chicago Cubs

On June 22, the Cubs were 32-39, 8.5 games behind the first place Brewers (and a game back of the Cardinals). Since that date the Cubs have played as well as anyone in baseball, going 26-12 and putting themselves in excellent position to make the playoffs.

Arizona Diamondbacks

Arizona has been unbelievably streaky. On May 24 (point 1) they were 25-23, but had only a 7% chance of making the playoffs, as their expected record was just 22-26, and they were in fourth place in the NL West.

But they then won 11 of 12, and by June 7 (point 2) they were tied for first, and were up to 32%. The Diamondbacks proceeded to to 14-24, and on July 21 (point 3) they were 4.5 games back, tied for third, and had worse than a 1 in 40 chance of playing in October.

Then, in the latest twist, they won 12 of 14 to improve to their current 62-50 record, with a 44% chance of making the playoffs. What they do next is anybody's guess.

Colorado Rockies

The Rockies had a very interesting 15 game stretch that can be seen here. As a whole they only went from 16% to 13%, but they had some fun doing it, going 1-9 between June 22 (point 1) and July 2 (point 2), and seeing their chances drop to 2.3%. But they followed that up with a five-game win streak, getting back to 13% on July 8 (point 3). Since that point they have leveled off, going 12-10.

If there are any more teams' graphs you would like to see, or if you have any questions or comments, please e-mail me at VegasWatch@gmail.com.

A Midseason Look at Futures Lines

I thought, at the halfway point of the season, I should take a look at what Futures odds are the best values.

I looked at the futures from four sites- Bodog, SportsBetting, Sports Interaction, and VIP. The odds listed below are the best “Odds to Win 2007 World Series” lines for each team.

To determine what I thought were each team’s chances of winning the World Series are, I took the data from Baseball Prospectus’ Postseason Odds. I used a combination of the real data Postseason Odds, and PECOTA Postseason Odds.

Once I had each team’s percentage chance of making the playoffs, I simply divided that percentage by eight (the total number of playoff teams). This system obviously isn’t perfect, as it gives each postseason team an equal chance of winning the championship. But, after the research I did discovering that regular season record has very little bearing on October success, I am not particularly concerned with this.

Here are, in my estimation, the seven best futures lines:

The fact that the Mariners are 100:1 seems absurd to me. On the other three sites they are 25:1, 35:1 and 28:1. Despite Hargrove’s shocking resignation this afternoon, they are only two behind the Angels in the loss column, having won eight in a row.

The Athletics are in a similar situation. 60:1 on VIP, but their best odds other than that are 35:1 (SportsBetting). Despite all the injuries the A’s, who always play better in the second half, are still in the race.

Those are the two long shots this system likes. The next three are all very similar lines for NL teams that have been playing well. I think these three lines are all good lines to bet on, but none of them seem completely out of place, like the two AL West teams.

The last two on the list are just barely better than breaking even. I think the Cubs, who have been playing better all year than their record indicates, are a solid bet. Their WS % data is also from before their victory over Milwaukee this afternoon. The Indians are probably about where they should be, as they have come down from about 20:1 at the start of the year.

So I think Seattle at 100:1 is definitely the most attractive line. The A’s line is probably second best, with San Diego and Chicago also having pretty good odds.

EDIT (7/4): VIP has updated their odds. Mostly notably, Seattle moved all the way from 100:1 to 35:1, and Oakland moved from 60:1 to 40:1.