my baseball playoffs picks

[crockpot]

i think i'm done collecting lines and calculating probabilities, and here's what i've come up with. annoyingly for anyone who was sharp betting futures during the season, the teams who are undervalued now are the same as they have been all year, so those who are hoping to hedge will have to give up some EV.

best play:

tigers to win world series (thegreek +1825, others +1800)

you can dock the tigers for all sorts of everything: having a tired young pitching staff, using their third- or fourth-best reliever as a closer, batting one of their worst hitters third, putting neifi on their playoff roster ahead of shelton(!?!), finishing 19-31. those things either don't matter (september record is negatively correlated with postseason success) or are not as significant as everyone is making them out to be.

indeed, the numbers say detroit is a substantial dog to new york, but not a huge one:

- detroit's pythagorean record is the same as new york's this year. this is offset somewhat by the additions to new york's roster, but not enough to make the yankees a 3-1 favorite.
- detroit's third-order wins are 5.6 behind new york, a substantial gap but not a great one. a 3-1 dog in a 5 game series has to be something like 25 wins worse than the other team over a full season for this line to be fair.
- of the three secret sauce ingredients which are most correlated with postseason success, the yankees and tigers each score high in only one: the yankees a great closer, the tigers a great defense. the yankees are exacerbating this shortcoming by starting the pitcher with the lowest strikeout rate in the majors twice in the series.

add it all up, and unless you can dock the tigers a ton for their late season fade (and everyone said the same things about a certain extremely similar team last year), the tigers are not worse than a 2-1 dog in this series.

why not just bet the tigers to win the ALDS at +300? you can do that if you like bets that offer less ROI but a higher chance of winning. but they are underrated in all three playoff series, not just one, and betting them to win the world series takes advantage of this by getting that edge three times instead of one.

hypothetical situation: you know a team is 40% to win any playoff series. the sportsbook builds its line around the assumption that they will actually win any series 30% of the time. (ignore vig for now)

your edge betting them in the first series is just .4/.3 = 33%. but if you bet them to win the world series, the true probability is .064 against a line of .027, for an edge of 137%.

i don't think the tigers' edge here cracks 100%, but it is well worth pursuing.

other good plays:

dodgers to win world series (+1385 thegreek, +1200 elsewhere)

similar to the tigers, the dodgers are being offered long odds partly due to the media overrating their opponents in their first series. they are also underrated, though for a different reason.

let's get this out of here right now: the mets are not that good. if they are a better team than the padres or dodgers right now, it isn't by much.

the dodgers have quite an underrated pitching staff. perusing the list of NL pitchers ranked by fielding-independent ERA, we find:

- takashi saito is a full run below billy wagner and has been the best closer in the league
- hong-chih kuo is the highest-ranked of any pitcher who will be starting in the NLDS (and his numbers have gotten even better since he moved into the rotation). he is also a power lefty, exactly the kind of pitcher the mets don't want to face.
- jonathan broxton's ERA is not a fluke
- lowe, maddux, and penny rank 7-8-9 in the league if you restrict the list to pitchers who qualified for the ERA title, and add together maddux's stats from the cubs and dodgers

meanwhile, the mets have a great bullpen but no starters with an FIP under 4.00, and are weighed down by maine's 4.94 and trachsel's 5.55. basically, their ace wouldn't crack the dodgers' playoff rotation.

that's a huge gap to make up. the mets do have the clearly better lineup, with three stars in beltan, reyes and wright. looking at it another way, they have a bunch of players who showed great unexpected growth from last season (including jose valentin also).

i rate the teams almost dead-even. new york does have a slight edge, plus home-field, which makes them about a 22 vs. AK favorite, but nowhere near the sportsbook lines. again, though, the underrating of the dodgers will affect them in every round. additionally, the world is assuming both that the yankees will cruise into the world series and steamroll their opponents once they get there. obviously this is not a given, but the lines are built with the assumption that it is.

basically any dodgers future is bettable; the world series line will just provide the most edge.

padres to win world series (mansion +1000, +900 widely available)

the padres are basically undervalued because:

- jake peavy has had a much worse ERA than he should based on his peripherals. peavy is the kind of ace a team can ride to a title.
- they are perceived as a team with no offense because they lack 20-homer players.
- they score fairly well in secret sauce relative to the other playoff teams, especially with higher playoff workloads for their best pitchers
- the same yankees/mets effects

other stuff worth betting:

twins to win AL (thegreek +305, +300 widely available)
any other tigers future

edit: the NL pitcher ranks link won't work here because the url has brackets that conflict with UBB code. select "NL" and sort by FIP. change Qualified to "Both" if you want relievers and part-timers included.

[almostbusto]

awesome writeup. very instructive. just wanted to be the first in with that...

[crockpot]

one more pick:

sportsbook is offering 25-1 that no one will hit a homer in tomorrow's yankees-tigers game. wang is starting for the yankees. i can't see how this could be -EV.

[Homer]

[ QUOTE ]
one more pick:

sportsbook is offering 25-1 that no one will hit a homer in tomorrow's yankees-tigers game. wang is starting for the yankees. i can't see how this could be -EV.

[/ QUOTE ]

Back of the envelope, I have this at about 6-1 being a fair price. 25-1 is insanity.

[chalk7]

thanks. with my luck, inge will homer in the 9th (this after him costing me $30k on sunday among other tigers).

[vilemerchant]

[ QUOTE ]

Back of the envelope, I have this at about 6-1 being a fair price. 25-1 is insanity.

[/ QUOTE ]

By the time I deposited it became 5-1 [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[crockpot]

[ QUOTE ]
By the time I deposited it became 5-1 [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

oops. i need to stop leaking these to 2+2ers. maybe we can all set up a private mailing list or something for really nice lines.

[chalk7]

sounds like a plan

[MicroBob]

i'm very much down for that.

thanks for the insights crock.

[MicroBob]

LA to win WS is +1441 at Pinny.