Baseball Futures 2012: Over/Under Win Totals

I've always been a big fan of the underdog ever since the Miracle Mets of '69 captured my imagination as a small boy. While other kids were pretending to be Mickey Mantle in the sandlot, I was Cleon Jones at the plate and Ron Swoboda making diving catches out of every routine fly.

Fast forward through history to the 1980 Miracle on Ice, Princeton almost beating Georgetown in 1989, and how I was able to make my high school basketball team with a 12-inch vertical. And who can change the channel whenever they run across Rudy Ruettger trying to get into Notre Dame? Jeremy Lin, Tim Tebow, Ron Paul, Pure Polly Purebred, blah blah blah.

The first time I went to Las Vegas in 1988 I went straight to the Sportsbook and placed bets on the two longest shots on the board. The Cincinnati Bengals were 500:1 after going 4-11 the season before (The season lost one game to a strike). I placed the minimum wager of $5 to win $2500. Eighteen Ickey Shuffles later and the Bengals were in the Super Bowl! Woooo!!! 3:10 to go, a 16-13 lead, and the Niners are pinned on their own eight-yard line. The only way the Bengals could lose now was if Tim Krumrie's leg explodes. Well, that's a little out of sequence, but still the most vivid memory of the game until Montana hit Taylor across the middle for the punch to the bread basket. Imagine a picture of me with Red Solo cup in hand staring at the TV in my Bay Area home with all the Niners fans around me going crazy. The biggest broken heart since Hooper's failed romance with Mary Ellen Moffat.

Not to be discouraged, I went back to the Sportsbook in the spring to pick out the ugliest baseball team on the board. There it was—The Baltimore Orioles, 500-1. Coming off 107 losses and a season they began with a record breaking 21 straight losses. Their chances were just below the snowballs. Funny things happen. Here we are in September and the Orioles are leading the AL East! Wooooo!!! The only thing that could go wrong now was if the Orioles were to wake up one morning and realized they were the Orioles. The alarm clock finally went off the last weekend of the season, and guess who so rudely barged into the room without knocking? No not Mr. Hand, the Toronto Blue Jays.

I had to tell you all that to tell you this: Underdogs just aren't what they used to be. For one thing, the biggest dogs are rarely offered at better than 150:1 these days. OK, this year's Astros get 300:1. And whereas the game is more efficient, Cinderella stories in pro sports championships are harder to come by. I suspect the true odds of the Astros winning it all are something closer to 10,000:1. The next in line 150:1 dogs of the Orioles, Mets, and Padres, should all be fetching 500:1.

Turning our attention then to finding a better play, we run into a bigger issue. The expected rake of the best sportsbook is about -135. That is, bet 135 to win 100, which isn't nearly as good compared to the standard bet 110 to win 100. More precisely the total odds off all the teams added together is 135%. In addition, there is the problem with the float. Your money is tied up for seven months. But at today's interest rates, I don't see that as a big problem.

Despite the fact that it is probably not a good value, many of us still want to place a little sumpin' sumpin' to give us something to root for. Whether it's your favorite team or a hunch, I use this bet sparingly more for entertainment than for return on investment.

The odds in this table are courtesy of Superbook. I have included win projections from three sources that I found online without a subscription. The first thing that stands out is that the wins don't add up. There should be a total of 2430 wins if all games are played. The Over/Under line has 2443, which suggests that people tend to bet the over and so the book has set the lines a half point above nominal. The Bleacher Report has way too many wins and can only be used comparatively.

I have a confession to make. I don't have my own projections. Frankly to do a credible job of projecting wins, one has to be pretty smart and do a lot of complex work. Instead I roll with my own strengths, namely liquor and guessing (aka Marketing). So instead, I have been executing Baseball Prospectus projections over the past few years. In 2009, I placed the following eight over/under bets based on projection differences of four or more games.

The overall result was 4-4. A small sample size to be sure, however, two of the bets lost by half a point. Intrigued, I soldiered on. In 2010 there was this:

Overall result 5-4. Barely covered the juice. Upon closer inspection there was a rather large outlier. The Angels were projected to win 10 less than the line. It turned out to be a winner. Perhaps making a smaller number of bets on the most extreme outliers is the way to go. The other outlier in 2010 was the Padres. They were projected at 71.5 wins, but won 90! Can you say underdog? The NL west, at least anecdotally, seems like the most volatile division. Shaken, not stirred, equal parts anecdote, liquor, and guessing, and I will make my underdog pick of the year, the Padres at 150:1. Seems better than the Pirates at 80:1, who also have 73.5 projected wins.

Further examination of this year's offerings, here is what BP thinks are the best bets:

Kansas City is this year's outlier. The other sources concur. But Oh no, it looks like we are too late. The line on Kansas City has moved to -145 on the under from the nominal -115. Instead of adjusting the wins down, Superbook prefers to just change the odds. A week ago the odds were -135. So money continues to come in on the Royals to not have a winning record.

The other lines that have moved are Miami, St.Louis, Cleveland, and the Mets, all to the over. Interesting that three of those teams concur with BPs best over picks. The best line not to move is Detroit at -6.5 games under projection.

I also noted from the 2010 season that overall the under beat the over 17 to 13. It looks like there were a few teams that over achieved by large margins whereas most of the unders were closer. I had my best luck that season betting the under on pitchers wins that were considered to be injury prone. I can't go into that detail here, but in summary, here is my current theory:

I haven't discovered a large edge in futures betting. Do it sparingly, mostly for entertainment. Keep track of your results.

In general, bet the under. You get a free half point from the house, as the public has a tendency to bet on favorites and for their favorite team to succeed. Four teams have improved their odds to the under because of the public. My favorite picks are therefore Detroit under 92.5 and San Diego over 73.5. You might want to consider some of the other unders on the list, Houston, Arizona, Angels, Dodgers, Phillies, Toronto. Perhaps the better way to play the Royals is to find a book that has moved the over down a few games and kept the standard -115.

Bet against hype. Bet the under on players with injury risk. Sounds simple, but sometimes the best things in life are simple—like Underdogs, Liquor, and Guessing. Whether they are profitable or not, is still under investigation.