[crockpot]

edited to credit Card08 for pointing a lot of these out to me.

player props:

Joe Blanton under 15.5 W
Ervin Santana under 15 W
Jon Garland under 16.5 W
Gary Matthews Jr. under .302 BA
Bobby Jenks under 38 Sv
Francisco Rodriguez over 1.90 ERA
Justin Morneau under 127 RBI
Mike Piazza over 59.5 RBI
Takashi Saito under 35.5 Sv
Ben Sheets over 170 K
Huston Street over 2.24 ERA
Justin Verlander under 15.5 W
Barry Zito under 16 W

most of these are at bodog.

with a few exceptions (verlander and the closers), these props require a minimum of 140 games or 25 starts (pitchers) for action. this explains why i bet the sheets and piazza overs, as they are very likely to beat those totals anytime they stay healthy, but it does hurt the win total unders since an injury is no longer an automatic victory.

still, i don't know how anyone, even hawk harrelson or ozzie, can think jon garland will win 17 games this year. you'll notice several common links between the starters i chose:

- not the best starter on his own team
- fluky high win totals in past years
- team will win fewer games in 2007 than in 2006

as for the others, saito and jenks both are at the risk of being replaced after early ineffectiveness, pitch for teams that will win fewer games than projected, and come with inherent risk (saito's mediocre japanese numbers and jenks' control, injury, and poor spring). morneau, street, and k-rod have established levels of performance that they cannot keep up.

matthews...if you think he has a chance in hell of batting .302 in a full season, there's a for sale sign on my bridge.

Field to win AL Cy Young 10-1
Field to win NL Cy Young 10-1
Tie for ML lead in pitcher wins 5-1

the tie looks like it happens roughly one year in three. i have no idea why the line was ever this good, but i think it's been bet down now by anyone who can check baseball-reference.

as for the field bets, first, it's important to keep in mind that the league leader in wins is the favorite, so this award is prone to a luckbox winner like colon in '05. here are some names that are part of the field, among many others with an outside shot:

AL:
Lackey
Haren
Escobar
Mussina

NL:
Peavy
Harang
Garcia
Hamels

yes, that would be jake peavy, probably the first person i draft if i'm in a pool to name this year's cy winner.

both of these are still 10-1 on bodog.