Vegas Watch

Paul DePodesta, who is now working with the Padres, started a blog.

So did Bill Simmons. No comments though.

Manny.

Brian Sabean, being awesome. Comment #24 is hysterical.

A reason for decreased scoring- the weather?

So, Brian Bannister, why'd you struggle a couple starts ago? “Just had to let my Babip regress before I started dealing again.” And why do you pitch better during the day? "The hitters tell me my fastball looks faster when they’re still a little hungover.” Okay, got it. Thanks.

Chuck keeps it real.

Zumsteg has the right idea.

Graph up top is FanGraphs, of course. Pictures are from this tremendous Yahoo! photo gallery.

They won't let me use the Yahoo! "!" as part of a label. Mottram wouldn't approve.

The four AL spots are pretty much locked up, so the NL teams are what's interesting here.

I wonder how these different sites actually work. I think VIP is smaller than the others, so do they have to set more attractive lines to draw customers? That would make sense, since they're still making a (small) profit- this week their lines add up to 117%.

Anyway, the Padres at 14:1 is nice, mostly because of last night- they're up to almost 81% to make the postseason, with a 2.5 game lead in the Phillies in the WC with 11 games left.

Pedro pitches Friday night- if he looks as good as he did in his last start, you have to like the Mets at 7:1.

Beyond that, there's not much, although the Rockies are kind of a cool longshot (they're also up 9-3 on the Dodgers as I write this), and I continue to like the Indians because of the top of their rotation.

Futures Watch Archive

Update: Rockies win, and I missed this before but the Padres already won, increasing their lead to three games.

Why the "NL West Edition"? Because every single good line this week involves the NL West. Here we go.

All five sites have futures odds up right now, so there are some good ones this week:

The Padres were hovering around 15:1 in early July, and got as low as 10:1 about three weeks into July. Then, right after the trade deadline, there was an abrupt jump from 15:1 to 25:1, where they are a tremendous value- coming into today's games they were about 50% to make it into October, and with there pitching, they could be a tough out in the playoffs.

The Rockies at 60:1 are pretty good; at this point I have no idea what is going to happen in the NL West, so by that logic taking the team with the highest odds (excluding the Giants, who are terrible) isn't a bad idea.

The Indians at 15:1 are also interesting, as that's pretty high considering they were at 10:1 for most of July. Westbrook is finally coming around, going 2-0 with a 1.29 ERA in his last three starts. If they can get him, Sabathia, Carmona and Byrd all pitching to their capabilities at the same time, they should be able to play on into October.

SportsBetting and SportsInteraction both haven't posted odds since the trade deadline, so this week's Futures Watch is a bit weak, but here are the top 10 lines:


The Brewers line is weird. Yeah, they've been losing ground to the Cubs, and their WS% has gone from 7.7% during the All-Star break, to it's current level of 5.6%

Here is a graph of the Brewers' best odds (the blue line) and their WS % (the red line) since the ASB:

The jump from 12:1 on August 1 (which was unusually low since a lot of sites took their odds down during the trade deadline) to 28:1 the next day is a crazy jump, and the reason the Brewers are easily the best line this week.

The Padres had a similar jump, going from 15:1 to 25:1 in a day. But their drop in the standing has been more siginificant, as they have gone from a high of 7.7% (July 13) to 3.5% before yesterday's win. Still, 25:1 is pretty good.