Bet I made with a yankees fan today

[Jon34]

After getting sick of listening to a coworker yammer on about how there is plenty of time left and the yankees will make a run, I'm offered 2:1 that the yankees don't make the playoffs. He accepted, so I'm laying $100 to win $50.

What do you think? I tried to find prop online, but the best I found was a reference to a bodog line from May 29th (about 3ish games in the standings ago) that had that same bet at +400/-700. I feel like 3 games better still shouldn't move it so much to make it a bad bet. An espn columnist (Neyer maybe?) said the other day that they have a 20-25% shot.
Do you like the bet?

[sylar]

betting just to shut someone up is -EV imo.

-200 sounds like a better line than most sportsbooks tho. good job.

[JerseyDP]

Good bet. Baseball Prospectus has a postseason odds report where they run game season sims a million times. Now Yanks have 18% chance of making it.

Latest report:
http://www.baseballprospectus.com/st...cs/ps_odds.php

[Jon34]

I wasn't offering just to make him shut up of course. I thought I made a favorable line. I'm decent with baseball but not a serious sports bettor or anything.

[MCS]

You have the best of it by a ton.

[King Yao]

IMO, the price is just about fair value.
JerseyDP linked to Baseball Prospectus, but those numbers are not the best numbers to use. Instead, BP themselves have two better projections linked to that page:


"Initial" projection: 18.4%
Pecota projection: 27.3%
ELO projection: 33.6%

Pecota and ELO are projection systems that uses projected statistics of the players, while the "initial" system uses statistics so far this season. IMO, Pecota and ELO are better indicators of the future, thus I think the better number is closer to 30% than 18%. And that's why I think you made a bet that is close to fair value.

[sylar]

some people swear by ELO, but its numbers are rather wild sometimes. for example, Pecota gives 4% chance of Yankees winning AL East while ELO gives 15%!!!

From what I understand, -200 is the fair price for this bet if ELO is right, but the difference between 4% and 15% is so huge, i tend to think ELO is on crack. (even though i am rooting for the yankees)

[MCS]

[ QUOTE ]
Pecota projection: 27.3%

[/ QUOTE ]

Based on almost nothing, I like PECOTA the most, so I still think he got a pretty great deal getting 73.7% for -200.

[TheFish]

if he's a NYY fan he'll prob jew out on the bet when he loses