July 2020 – Knuckleballs

Bet On It! Part 5 – Opening Day Edition

Posted on 23 July, 2020 by Jim Crikket

(NOTE: In this “Bet On It” series of posts, I refer regularly to the two online sportsbook services to which I subscribe legally as a resident of the state of Iowa. If you’re interested in checking out these services for yourself, you can do so by clicking William Hill and/or Elite Sportsbook.)

With Opening Day of the 2020 Major League Baseball season now upon us, I thought I would take a quick peek at what, if any, adjustments the sportsbooks I subscribe to have made compared to those I posted in Part 4 of this “Bet On It!” series earlier in July, as teams were making their way back into their abbreviated summer camps.

It turns out, however, that my fellow betting subscribers have given the oddsmakers at William Hill and Elite Sportsbook very little reason to make adjustments to their MLB season odds.

I was pleased to see that William Hill has again begun taking bets on the Division races and even happier to see that they’ve adjusted their line for the favored Twins, compared to what they were offering back in March when spring training was suspended. The Twins’ line is now at -140, which means you have to bet $140 to win $100 on a Twins Central Division championship.

That may not sound great, but William Hill hadn’t offered better than -160 since I started checking in January and still held the line at -170 in mid March. I really like the Twins’ chances in a 60-game sprint so I went ahead and put a little money on the -140 line… all while cursing myself for only putting $50 on the even money 1-1 line that Elite was offering as recently as the end of January. (Elite has not, that I’ve noticed, offered Divisional Championship lines since MLB announced they’d be resuming the season.)

William Hill’s dampened enthusiasm for the Twins is not reflected, however, in their odds on our guys winning the American League Pennant. In fact, those odds at William Hill have dropped from 7-1 when summer camps opened to 6-1 currently. That matches Elite’s current line.

Neither book has changed their outlook on the Twins winning it all. The Twins remain at 16-1 and 15-1 at William Hill and Elite, respectively.

As for the odds for all of the other favorites we’ve been following in this series, both books have remained unchanged on their odds for teams like the Yankees, Dodgers and Astros.

If you’re one of those poor sick souls who follow the Cubs closely, though, there’s been a little movement in the past few weeks.

William Hill has moved their odds on the Cubs winning the National League Pennant from 10-1 to 12-1 currently. Elite is unconvinced, however, leaving their line at 8-1. So if you’ve been looking for an opportunity to throw your money away on the Cubbies, now might be the time to do it. I haven’t noticed 12-1 being offered since the end of January.

Interestingly, the opposite is happening if you’re looking to bet on the Cubs to win the World Series. Elite has moved from 18-1 down to 15-1 on a Cubs championship. Not that it really should matter, given that you’ll want to be taking William Hill up on their unchanged 20-1 line, anyway, should you be in the market for this bet.

Finally, William Hill has added one additional interesting option – betting on which player will lead MLB in Runs + Home Runs. (At least that’s what I think “MOST RS HR’S” means, I’m still kinda new at some of this. If that’s not correct, oh well.) Mike Trout is the odds-on favorite at 12-1 odds, but I couldn’t resist putting $10 on the “Bringer Of Rain.” If Josh Donaldson comes through for me (and, of course, the Twins) over the next couple of months, I’ll make a cool $800 on that bet.

Make it rain, baby!

Bet On It! Part 4

Posted on 4 July, 2020 by Jim Crikket

When I posted Part 3 of this “Bet On It!” series back on March 8, it’s unlikely any of us could have foreseen that four months later we still wouldn’t have seen Major League Baseball’s Opening Day.

Within just a couple of weeks from the time that article was posted, pretty much all MLB bets had been taken off the board at the sportsbooks.

Now, as we try to celebrate our nation’s birthday, the two books that I’m a member of have begun to post some MLB baseball action, though neither William Hill nor Elite Sportsbook have a full range of options available yet.

There are enough, however, that it’s worth taking a fresh look at how the bookies are feeling about which teams are most likely to emerge with trophy hardware this season and, in particular, how they’re feeling about the Minnesota Twins.

To review, William Hill had the Twins at 12-1 odds to win the American League pennant and 22-1 to win the World Series before the club signed Josh Donaldson. After adding the slugger, betters at both William Hill and Elite have pushed those odds southward, to the point where, in early March, William Hill had the Twins at 7-1 to win the AL and 14-1 to win the Series. Elite was a little less enthusiastic about the Twins’ chances, setting their odds at 8-1 (AL) and 20-1 (WS) in March.

While William Hill has maintained their 7-1 line for the Twins to win the AL, their odds on winning the Series bounced back up to the 16-1 level they were at in mid-February.

Elite, meanwhile, is liking the Twins more than they did in March, rather than less. They now offer just 6-1 odds on a Twins pennant and 15-1 odds on a WS trophy.

Only William Hill has re-opened betting on team wins, setting the over/under at 35 wins for the Twins. Given the uncertainty of just how many of the scheduled 60 games will actually get played, I think I’ll leave that number alone.

Interestingly, though, William Hill puts the line at 33.5 wins for Cleveland and maybe even more interestingly, 32.5 wins for the White Sox. That seems high for Chicago, but I suppose it reflects an optimism based on them getting to play a significant percentage of their games against Detroit and Kansas City (not to mention the Pirates). Still, I’m going to have to consider putting some money on the under there.

Here’s something I’m still trying to figure out, though. The futures bets I placed during the offseason at Elite are still active, while those I booked at William Hill no longer show up in my account.

On Elite, I booked the Twins to win the AL Central back when I could still get even 1-1 odds and took a flyer on the Angels to win it all at 35-1 odds. But I also booked the Twins to win the AL at 11-1 and to win the Series at 22-1 on William Hill and those bets are nowhere to be found.

I’ve started combing through communications from William Hill concerning how they were going to treat MLB bets and all I’ve seen is that they would void bets on cancelled events (and I can appreciate them cancelling bets on team wins), but other futures bets would remain alive as long as a winner is eventually determined. So, yeah, I’d love to still have those 11-1/22-1 bets in play.

Neither of my sportsbooks appear to be offering bets on MLB Division winners at this point and the only prop bet I found featuring individual players was at Elite, where we can put some money on who we think will be the MLB home run king.

Mike Trout and Pete Alonso are listed at 8-1, while Christian Yelich and Cody Bellinger are at 10-1. We can also get 10- on “the field” and that seems to be a choice worth considering, to me.

Miguel Sano, at 20-1, is the sole Twins slugger among the 25 players listed. Think I’ll pass on that, thanks.

Revisiting a few of the other contenders, it doesn’t look like either William Hill or Elite have significantly changed their views on the MLB big dogs.

The Dodgers have overtaken the Yankees (barely) as the odds-on favorite to be the World Series Champion. The Dodgers are at +325 and the Yankees at +350 on William Hill. Both teams sit at 7-2 on Elite.

The Astros have tumbled a bit, though, on both sites. The two books have always viewed Houston’s chances very differently. In March, Wm Hill had them at 9-1, while Elite was more optimistic at 5-1. Now, William Hill has them posted at 12-1 and Elite at 6-1. I have to admit, if it didn’t mean having to potentially find myself rooting for the Astros, that 12-1 offering would be tough to pass up.

There’s a lot of talk about how the 60-game season could open the door for mediocre teams to get hot, qualify for the postseason and then potentially knock off one or two better teams to make a run toward the World Series.

So, maybe we should look for decent value bets along those lines. I like my bet on the Angels at 35-1 to win it all (if Trout decides to play, anyway), but are there other options, too?

As much as I’d love to see it happen, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone in the AL East finishing above the Yankees. The Red Sox are still sitting at a relatively inviting 17-1 to win the AL pennant, but they’d not only have to get hot enough to finish ahead of New York, but also top a pretty strong Tampa Bay team.

I could see the Angels or Athletics topping the Astros in the AL West, but I already have money on Los Angeles. Elite is offering 12-1 on Oakland winning the pennant, though, so that’s at least worth considering.

Forget the AL Central. The White Sox are at 12-1 on both sites, but I just don’t see them topping both Cleveland and Minnesota and then ALSO staying hot enough to nail down a pennant. They’re at least a year from putting that kind of run together.

In the National League, the Braves and Nationals will be tough, of course, but 10-1 on the Mets to win the NL pennant is worth thinking about, anyway. If you’re feeling adventurous, William Hill is giving you 15-1 on the Phillies, but that probably has something to do with having to fight through a gauntlet in that division (and their cross-league competition in the AL East), just to get to the postseason.

Like the Yankees in the AL East, the Dodgers in the NL West make it almost pointless to consider one of their Divisional rivals, but if you could hit on the Padres (20-1) or D’Backs (25-1) winning the NL pennant, the payoff would be healthy.

That leaves the NL Central and there’s perhaps at least one interesting option there. I don’t see an obvious dominant team (the two books can’t even agree on whether the Cubs or Cardinals are more likely to win the NL), so it wouldn’t be beyond reason to imagine the Reds or Brewers riding a hot streak or two.

Both teams are listed at 15-1 on Elite and either might be an option at that number. But over at William Hill, things get more interesting. They only give you 10-1 on the Reds, but they offer 20-1 on Milwaukee. That’s tempting.

That’s enough for today, I guess. I don’t know whether we’ll actually see MLB play games this summer and, honestly, I’m still not 100% convinced they should be playing.

But that won’t keep me from keeping an eye on the betting lines.

A Shortened MLB Season? Bring It On!

Posted on 2 July, 2020 by Jim Crikket

It may be because I’ve spent years enjoying Class A Midwest League baseball, which routinely splits its season into two halves with every team’s record resetting to 0-0 by mid-to-late June, but I find myself embracing the plans for big leaguers to sprint through a 60-game Major League season in 2020.

I am not only embracing it, I’m excited about it!

In fact, the only thing tempering my enthusiasm is the concern we all (I would hope) have about potential COVID-related health issues for players, coaches and other people necessary to field teams and put on the games. I’m an unapologetic, mask-wearing believer in just how serious this pandemic is, and I’m concerned that we’re all moving way too fast to re-open everything.

I wasn’t in charge of deciding to try to have some kind of MLB season and if I had been, I’m not sure we all wouldn’t be throwing in the towel on 2020 and crossing our fingers while we hope to have some sort of normal 2021. But since the owners and players mutually decided to give this a shot, I’m trying to focus on what “is,” rather than what I personally think “should be.”

And what “is” is a season unlike anything any of us has ever seen Major League Baseball do. The old cliché is that baseball (at least at the Major League level) is a marathon, not a sprint. But when you slice 102 games off the normal 162-game schedule, that cliché goes into the scrapheap. Make no mistake, the 2020 MLB regular season will at least seem like a sprint to many of the people involved.

A lot of people, including some fans and writers I respect, maintain that a 60-game season is a farce – that mediocre teams (or worse) will find a way to slip into the postseason at the expense of good teams who simply have the misfortune of suffering too many losing streaks caused by injuries, illnesses and bad hops. And those people are right.

While it’s not like mediocre teams have never unexpectedly found themselves in the postseason or even winning a World Series (anyone remember the 1987 Twins?), the likelihood of pretenders crashing the postseason party at the expense of contenders this year is admitedly greater.

But I have an answer for that. I simply do not care.

I’ve watched the Cedar Rapids Kernels play what is essentially a pair of 70-game seasons every summer for years. And guess what… yes, getting hot or turning cold at some point makes a ton of difference, but I’ve never heard a single fan complain about it.

The minor leagues that play split seasons do so for a couple of reasons. First, rosters (particularly at the lower MiLB levels) see significant turnover as parent clubs move players up and down (and out of) the organizational ladder throughout the season, so the rosters teams finish the season with seldom closely resemble the Opening Day rosters.

But just as important (at least to the MiLB affiliate front offices trying to at least break even financially), it makes it more likely that every team in the league will at least be in contention for a postseason spot during much (if not most) of July and August, perhaps the two most important months in MiLB baseball in terms of retaining fan engagement.

So, in this bizarre summer, Major League Baseball is going to take a page out of the MiLB playbook and, as a result, fans in Kansas City and Detroit will be tuning in to watch their teams play ball in August in greater numbers than would have been likely in a normal season.

I fail to understand why that’s a bad thing. Is it because it’s possible the Yankees or Dodgers might have a bad stretch and not make the postseason? Cry me a river.

I realize that the team I’m a fan of, the Minnesota Twins, are now one of those teams that were built to compete over 162 games. They arguably have more depth than almost any other team in the American League and that advantage could be negated by the shortened regular season (though that pesky pandemic thing could certainly still make depth a critical factor).

If the Twins have one too many rough stretches and find themselves on the outside of the postseason looking in, so be it. They’re still almost certainly going to be playing meaningful baseball right to the wire, so I’ll be watching (and if you care enough about baseball that you’re reading this, I’d bet you will be watching, too).

Could MLB have played 100 games if owners and players had been able to come to an agreement sooner? Maybe. But even if they had, would that have made the season any more legitimate than what we’re dealing with now? There simply was no way that MLB was going to play anything close to a normal number of regular season games in 2020, so I’m not sure why anyone is even still complaining about the legitimacy issue. That issue is moot, so let’s move on.

The beat writers covering the American League Central Division teams for The Athletic posted a piece where they discussed each AL Central team’s outlook going into a 60-game season and those writers each made a compelling case for why fans in each of the five markets should have genuine interest in what transpires over the shortened season.

Niko Goodrum as a Cedar Rapids Kernel in 2013 (Photo by S. Buhr)

Even as a Twins fan, it got me excited about following the fortunes of the other four Divisional rivals, as well. (I admit, this may have been influenced some by Tigers beat writer Cody Stavenhagen answering the question “Is there a player on your team who could rise to prominence during this shortened season?” by suggesting we “keep an eye on” Niko Goodrum, one of my personal favorite Kernels alums.)

I’m not even worked up about the plans to use the minor league rule that places a runner on second base to start each extra inning. I didn’t like it when it was adopted for MiLB games, but I understood it was intended to reduce the chances that valuable young pitching arms would be over-worked in extended extra-inning games.

But that’s only part of why MLB is using it in 2020. Sure, it will reduce some wear and tear on relief pitching in a season where each team’s pool of potential roster replacements could be limited due to the minor league seasons being cancelled entirely.

More importantly though, it could help reduce the chances of players, coaches and other personnel contracting the COVID virus by keeping game times for extra-inning games to a minimum. It’s hard for me to object to that and it’s preferable to simply allowing games to end in a tie after nine innings.

If you are upset that a 60-game season just won’t be what a 162-game season would have been, you’re right. It won’t be.

But as a fan who typically watches a local minor league team essentially play two short seasons every summer, I can assure you that if you embrace it, a 60-game season has the potential to cram a lot of excitement into a couple of months of baseball.

And, by the way, if you want to do your part to make sure the players and coaches stay healthy, maybe consider wearing a mask whenever you’re out and about.

If we all do that, we can be more certain that the people we come into contact with who then come into contact with someone who comes into contact with a player or coach won’t pass something onto that guy that would keep him from getting through this season safe, healthy and productive.

We’ve never seen a MLB season like what’s happening in 2020 and, God willing, we will never see another one like it. I’m praying that all involved get through this season healthy and if prayer is your thing, too, please join me. If not, then… I dunno… cross your fingers and toes or something and just hope for the best.

A 60-game season is certainly not ideal. But it’s what we have. And it is has the potential to be very exciting. I’m embracing that and I hope you’ll eventually join me. It could be one heck of a ride.