149-102

As Shawn Riggins succinctly notes, the end of interleague play is a very sad time for the AL:

"We've got a lot of work ahead of us. Interleague play is done now."

The return of intraleague play brings not only stiffer competition, but also the heightened importance of divisional matchups. There are only two weeks until the All-Star break, but the scheduled matchups could allow for some significant movement in the standings.

AL East
Today-Wednesday; TB @ BOS
Thursday-Sunday; BOS @ NYY
7/8-7/9; TB @ NYY
7/11-7/13; NYY @ TOR

The headlining series, which is currently all over the ESPN.com home page, is obviously Tampa-Boston, starting tonight. The Red Sox dropping two of three in Houston allowed the Rays to move into first by a half game (well, technically, 0.8 games...).

Tampa is actually favored (-145/+115) to win the series, for two reasons. The first is obvious--they're at home. The second is also very important though--their rotation sets up perfectly, and Boston's does not. The Rays have their top three starters scheduled to pitch, in Shields, Garza, and Kazmir. The opposite is true for the Red Sox, who have their 3-5 starters throwing, as Lester and Beckett pitched this weekend (I'd take Lester over Matsuzaka right now).

The Yankees recently finished a five week stretch where they played the Orioles, Mariners, Twins, Blue Jays, Royals, A's, Padres, and the bottom half of the NL Central. Although they went 22-12, they gained only a single game in the standings. The wild card will very likely come out of the East, so being five games behind two excellent teams isn't the end of the world, but they certainly have their work cut out for them.

The Blue Jays are actually a good deal better than their 40-43 record, although it's probably too late to recover. Their run differential is +28, which is hard to do when you hit .239/.329/.349 w/RISP.

I can't imagine Orioles fans are happy with their 41-39 record. They're still 100-1 to make the playoffs, but the respectable first half may fool them into not being sellers at the deadline.

AL Central
Today-Wednesday; DET @ MIN, CLE @ CHW
7/10-7/13; MIN @ DET

The Indians shouldn't even really be included in this discussion. Having Sabathia and Lee back-to-back in the rotation is dumb, if only for psychological reasons. They win with those two, and everybody gets excited, until they realize that the next three nights are Byrd/Laffey/Sowers, and their cleanup hitter still has a .294 OBP. The schedule over the next couple weeks is tough--@CHW, @MIN, @DET, vsTB--so it wouldn't be shocking to see Sabathia traded during the break.

From Rosenthal's article the other day:

After Sabathia, the Indians' player drawing the most trade interest is third baseman Casey Blake, who leads the majors with a 1.281 OPS with runners in scoring position.

Yes. Casey Blake is the clutchiest player in the world, someone should trade for him immediately. Just don't look at his clutch stats from last year; that was a fluke.

Speaking of flukes, the Twins have gone on a nice little run here, winning 13 of 15. Which is great, until you realize they have a team OPS+ of 98, and ERA+ of 92. There are better, more thorough ways to make that point, but I think that sums it up pretty nicely.

By the way, the Twins are currently -590 to not win the division at Matchbook, which is a pretty good price for a team that has a 6% chance of doing so.

AL West
Today-Wednesday; OAK @ LAA
7/11-7/13; LAA @ OAK

The A's are just hanging around, four back in the loss column. If they want to keep their chances of winning the division up at 45%, they're going to have to start translating that pretty run differential into some actual wins.

They also need to figure out what's wrong with Blanton. His K:BB in his first 12 starts was 41:20; it's 13:14 in his last six.

Break Up The Rays

Did you really think Tampa's six game winning streak would go unmentioned on this site?

At this point, every piece of purely objective analysis indicates that they will finish over .500. PECOTA pegged them at 88 wins in the preseason. They're currently 14-11, which works out to 90.7 wins over a full season. Their record in the adjusted standings is even a bit better than their actual record- based solely on their play so far, they'd be expected to win 87.6 games.

And yet...being "purely objective" is hard. They have never won over 70 games. They allowed 944 runs last year, thanks to a laughably bad defense. Their team payroll is $44MM- the entire pitching staff is making about as much as Barry Zito. None if this is particularly relevant, but it's tough to ignore.

If we were able to ignore the second paragraph, and just went by the information in the first one, would would Tampa's odds for winning the AL East be? Definitely better than the Blue Jays, right? Well, at both BetUS and Bodog, Toronto is 5:1 to win the division. Tampa is 25:1 at BetUS. For comparison, the Royals are 22:1 to win the Central, and the Marlins are 15:1 to win their division.

25:1 is too high. Those are very good odds. Should they be +233, as PECOTA suggests? No, that'd be ridiculous. But there's a whole lot of room between +233 and +2500.

Matchbook is a very good place to look when considering things like this, since you can bet either side- you can bet that the Rays don't win the division. Currently, that prop is being offered at -1500. This presents an arbitrage situation- one can bet on the Rays at +2500 at BetUS, and against them at -1500 on Matchbook, and lock in about 2.5% profit.

But I'm more interested in what the market thinks the Rays' chances are. That -1500 has been available all afternoon, and so has Tampa winning the division at +860. That nobody has jumped at either tells us that their true odds are between 6.3% and 10.4%. Let's be conservative and say 7%. This would put their true odds at 13:1. A far cry from PECOTA's +233, but not close to 25:1 either.

As you probably noticed when I mentioned the odds for the Royals and Marlins to win their division, it's rare that you can find a decent longshot in the "To Win Division" odds at sites like BetUS and Bodog. The 2008 Rays are a pretty rare team, though. Even so, I doubt they will be 25:1 for now- people are starting to pay attention now that they're winning baseball games on the field, rather than just looking good according to some crazy computer.

Photo: STATS Blog.

Super Bowl Odds

Via MLB Playoff Odds, BetCRIS has posted lines for the four possible Super Bowl matchups:

San Diego (-3) vs Green Bay
San Diego (-6) vs NY Giants
New England (-12) vs Green Bay
New England (-14) vs NY Giants

From the Matchbook odds on each game, here are the chances of each matchup:

SD vs GB: 9.4%
SD vs NYG: 3.1%
NE vs GB: 66.1%
NE vs NYG: 21.4%

Based on these, the average SB line will be AFC -11.4. Sportsbook still has the SB line at -13.5, which is probably too high. Bodog has it at 12.5, BetCRIS has it at 12.

Inside Vegas: Wild Card Weekend

The chances of each remaining team winning the Super Bowl, based on the futures odds at Sportsbetting, BetUS, Bodog, VIP, Sports Interaction, The Greek, Bookmaker, and Matchbook:

Essentially New England vs. the field at this point, which is to be expected. I would guess the Pats' 51.1% breaks down to something like an 88% chance of winning their first game, 75% for their second, and 78% for the SB (neutral site, but against an NFC team clearly inferior to the Colts, their likely AFC Championship opponent.)

As far as I can tell, the best you can do on the Pats to win the SB is -138 at Matchbook, and -145 at The Greek.

Bodog has the two most likely SB matchups as Pats-Cowboys (2/3) and Pats-Packers (7/2). Indy-Dallas is third, at 5/1. The highest odds I have seen are at The Greek for Bucs-Chargers and Giants-Chargers, at 172.5:1 each. (Something like Titans-Redskins would obviously be much higher than that, but these sites don't list all the possible matchups, and have the field at around 5:1.)

The "Early Super Bowl Line", which was once as high as AFC -16.5 (after New England's 45-point win over the Redskins) is down to 11.

As usual, BetUS has some completely random props. The O/U for total points scored this weekend is 160.5, and the O/U for FGs is 12.5. The prop for Randy Moss' total TD catches in the playoffs came out at 5 (which seemed almost ridiculously high), but is now down to 4.5.

The playoff favorites for most receiving, passing, and rushing yards are Moss (+200), Brady (EV), and Maroney (+350), respectively. I'm shocked. Amusingly, Eli Manning has the highest odds of anyone, at 30:1 to have the most passing yards.

Week 13 Undefeated Odds

This weeks' Patriots undefeated odds, from BetUS:

I know they're not going to lose five in a row. But 1500:1? That's pretty tempting.

Their percentage has increased by 5.5% since last week which is interesting. The money line for the Eagles game (+1600 for Philly, -4000 for the Pats) indicated they had about a 94% chance of winning. 46.0% to 51.5% is a big jump for unimpressively winning a game you only had a 6% chance of losing.

I have no idea why, but most of the other sites don't have odds up this week. You can bet on the Super Bowl coin toss, but not on whether the Pats will win out. The one site that does have a line is Matchbook, where they're -175 to go 16-0, +150 for 15-1 or worse. So, despite the less favorable line, they think the chances are even better, at 61.4%.