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Old 09-25-2007, 05:39 AM
iggymcfly iggymcfly is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Posts: 3,784
Default Re: Easy money on Matchbook (AL East future)

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They changed that 2 days ago. The 19% figure is counting ties as a win for the Yankees.

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if you think the red sox are a considerably better team than the yankees at this point, and that the devil rays are a .466 team going forward, you should really just fade the yankees every game for the rest of the season and get rich that way.

the postseason odds report is really not that useful this late in the year. i blogged awhile back about the reasons why.

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You're missing the point. I don't think this is a good bet because of the skill difference between the teams or because of their remaining schedule. I think they're very equivalent in terms of talent (maybe a slight edge to the Yankees), and I think the schedules are about even with Boston getting the tougher teams at home and the Yankees getting the weaker teams on the road.

The point is that a 2 game lead is very difficult to overcome with only 6 games left in the season. If every game from here on out was a coinflip, there would be 3302 combinations that would give the division to the Red Sox and 794 combinations that would give it to the Yankees. The fact that the games aren't coinflips and that the Red Sox and Yankees will each be around 60-65% in each remaining game makes it even more likely that the groupings will be closer, and gives you the numbers reflected in Baseball Prospectus.

If you have some specific reason why the pitching matchups favor the Yankees, then yeah, that might knock it down a little bit, but overall the Red Sox are a great bet to win the division at -450 even if the Yankees are their equal. It's all moot because the market adjusted and -450 isn't available any more, but saying to bet the individual games instead of the soft division line is just silly
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