Cardinals +700 to win NL Central

[Pade]

I took them last night when they were up by 4 or 5 runs late in their game at bodog for +750 and I hate the cardinals.

[MicroBob]

weird that they would be +700 imo.
Only 2.5 out trailing 2 teams.

COL is 5 out and also trailing 2 teams but they are +500.
PHI is 4 out and behind 2 teams and they are only +300.

They don't have any other +700's but they do have L.A. as +800 and those guys are trailing 3 teams and 6.5 out.

StL has momentum while CHI and MIL seem like they're trying to blow this thing.

Definitely like StL here. Bet is placed. Guess I'm a Cards fan for the rest of the season.

[WaterOlay]

i got this yesterday at 8:1 at sportsbook.com for 500

today it is down to 4:1

$$$$$

[Homer]

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Why is PECOTA better than ELO?

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Better projections?

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I was asking why, I don't know anything about that BP stuff.

(I know I could just read the site, but meh)

[MrFeelNothin]

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StL has momentum while CHI and MIL seem like they're trying to blow this thing.


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Thats a good reason to bet.


The reason the Rockies are lower odds is because they are far more likely to win their division, fancy that! Neither 5/1 on the Rocks nor 7/1 on StL are going to be enough for me though.

[insanity31]

So you hammered the "sell" on the cards at wsex, right?

[MrFeelNothin]

Would have if I had an account there.

[Thremp]

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StL has momentum while CHI and MIL seem like they're trying to blow this thing.


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Thats a good reason to bet.


The reason the Rockies are lower odds is because they are far more likely to win their division, fancy that! Neither 5/1 on the Rocks nor 7/1 on StL are going to be enough for me though.

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Thats a terrible reason.


Homer,
I'm not well versed in PECOTA to the the level crock is, but its widely considered the best projection system. I don't know if playoff odds weight the SoS for future games though.

[MicroBob]

How are the Rockies far more likely to win their division when they are more games behind?

If you just want to be smart-alecky and rip on me for supposedly being stupid then don't bother.
I'm expressing an opinion and trying to learn a little bit about this stuff.

[Post-Oak]

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***WARNING*** I live in St. Louis.

This is at bodog, of course.

Before today's game, the Cardinals were trading at +376 at wsex, and I assume they will be around +300 after the game today. The market is paused now a wsex obviously, but for some reason bodog still allows you to bet their lines during games. I was about to post this last night when they were +750, but bodog closed down their lines minutes after I bet it. I assumed they would open it back up at around +350-400, but this line is still laughable.

Great bet on value alone, but if anyone needs more analysis, I'd be happy to give it. I don't think this line will be around much longer, and just wanted to type this up quickly.

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I think +700 is still -EV. This of course means that shorting Stl on WSEX is ++EV, which is what I believe.

Here's my analysis of St. Louis' chances.

With about 1/4 of the season left, they are 2.5 games behind Milwaukee and 2 behind the Cubs. This may not sound like much, but if you treated each of the remaining games as coinflips (i.e. every team has exactly a 50% chance to win), then this would give Stl a 17.8% chance of winning the division. This shows that being 2.5 games out of first, as well as being behind two teams, is a huge disadvantage.

At 17-18% to win the division, 7 to 1 would be ++EV, but when you consider the relative strengths of each of these three teams, it is clear that Stl has even less of a chance.

The Cards have been outscored 533-596 this season, which leads me to believe that they are a very bad team (especially considering how many games they get to play against NL Central teams).

The Cubs have outscored their opponents 564-519. A quick glance at their rosters should lead anyone to believe that the Cubs are the better team.

Milwaukee basically sucks but they are still probably better than the woeful Cards, who are only still in this thing because the NL Central is simply atrocious and because they have "ran well" relative to their RS/RA pythagorean record.

The Monte Carlo simulations at coolstandings and BP take schedule into account, so it seems that Stl has no noticeable advantage there.

Coolstandings gives Stl a 9.2% chance of winning the division. They calculate this by rating every team based upon RS/RA so far in the season, and running a Monte Carlo simulation of the remainder of the season 1 million times. This is not the most accurate of methods (due to the crude method of calculating a rating for each team), but it is helpful to reference.

The Cards are probably somewhere between 10-15% to win the division, so I wouldn't bother betting on them at 7 to 1 (unless I was gonna arb it).