People are suckers

The Yankees, who have a losing record by the way, are currently paying 3-1 on Sportsbook.com to win the AL pennant.  Do you have any idea how unbelievably stupid that is?  Currently the Red Sox are the favorite at 7-4 (which makes sense), but there are at least 5 other teams in the AL that have a better shot at winning the AL than the Yanks (the Indians, Angels, Tigers, White Sox, and Twins come to mind).  So you may be asking yourself, why is this line so out of whack?

The answer is simple: delusional Yankee fans keeping placing bets on them to win it.  You see, this is how bookmakers work.  They want to generate action on both sides of a bet.  If the money is leaning heavily towards one side, they adjust their lines to create action on the other side.  Ideally, they have 50% of the wagers on each side of the bet and make profits by charging juice.

Therefore, if fewer people were betting on the Yankees right now, their odds would probably be a more realistic 10-1 or so.  But as long as people keep betting on the Yankees, the bookies will keep their odds low and jack up those of other teams (the Indians, for example, are at 11-2).  Betting is all about finding value for a given risk (just like investing in stocks).  It’s like trying to find a good Sharpe ratio.  In this case, the Indians make a more compelling investment than the Yankees.

The media can be misleading when it calls one team a “favorite” to win something based on Vegas odds.  Vegas odds have little to do about who the oddsmakers think will win a game.  It’s more about making them money.

If you asked someone who really knew baseball, say, Peter Gammons, to rank the teams in the AL according to their likelihood of winning the pennant this year, I guarantee you he would not choose the Yankees second, at least given their performance up to this point in the season.

Baseball in Cleveland

The Tribe started off their season by taking two out of three games from the hated White Sox, then went home for a series against the Mariners this past weekend and didn’t play one game.  Snow hit Cleveland hard, as it has a tendency to do.  Today’s forecast calls for rain and temperatures in the 40’s, so MLB in all its wisdom has decided to move the Indians’ home games to Milwaukee.

Has anyone ever heard of anything like this?  It’s craziness.  Sure teams have been forced to play elsewhere due to extenuating circumstances (e.g., the Saints after Katrina, the Expos because Canadians hate baseball), but I can’t recall a team moving just because the weather stunk for 6 consecutive days.