Help me decide, Is it time for Sabermetrics to pay out? Ben Sheets?
Okay, 'Ben Sheets' was a dirty trick to get people in here, but I seriously do love the guy and would like to see some pros and cons about acquiring him. He could come with a short-term contract I think, and I mean whatever the Rangers offer him we could match and he'd probably rather play in the pitcher-friendly confines of Oakland...
But anyway...
So I was looking at some baseball gambling sites, and I noticed that right now the A's are projected at a 1/41 shot to win the world series, in the lowest tier of the projected teams. Seeing as gambling reflects the consumer and not the expert, it is no surprise that the A's are perpetually undervalued, so I ask the question -- is now the time to take a shot at capitalizing on this inequality, albeit an unlikely winner?
Let's say the A's add Johnson and Giambi or Furcal, take your pick - whatever you prefer and the gambling odds remain the same immediately following these acquisitions, 1/41 longshot for the A's to win it all. Btw, the Angels are a 2/15 at present. The question is how great is the discrepancy here?
Well, lets now say that not only do these A's moves happen, but that the Angels miss out on both CC and Tex, acquiring some minor but only +2-3 wins overall impact FAs and/or trade acquisitions.
If this were to happen, I'd peg the A's at roughly 40% chance to win the division, with Angels at 45-50% and Rangers at 10-15% and Mariners at a percent of a percent. Add on top of that the chance to win the wild card, which seems slim given the AL East, but still existent, I'll say the A's have a 42% chance of making the playoffs in my scenario.
Now, the playoffs are indeed a crap shoot (right? RIGHT?!?!), but if the A's make it I'm betting they are more likely to be underdogs than not. So rather than a 1/8 chance, I'll say they would be more likely to have a 1/9 chance to win the series should they make the playoffs.
All in all, this would mean I would be projecting the A's to have about a 4.6% chance to win the world series, while the gambling community would presumably still be waging (if I acted promptly) that the A's have more like a 2.4% chance to win the world series.
Also, keep in mind if I hit a price-threshold on some of these sites, ~$100, they will give me another $50 on my bet, thus increasing the inequality payout by another 50% margin.
I want to pull the trigger, now, someone smart give me input to prevent this from happening. Either that, or all aboard the Titanic. Are my A's projections overly favorable given these assumptions? How about if the Angels do acquire Tex and little else?
Ben Sheets?!?!
0 recs |
8 comments
Comments
I'll bite
MLBTR (who read on River Avenue Blues who read from the New York Daily News; don’t you love blogging?) came out with a story reporting that the Yanks are going to offer a two year 30 million deal for Sheets in the next 72 hours.
Considering your other information (the gambling thing), the market still undervalues the A’s as contenders. Which also means that Sheets probably does too. Which means that the A’s will surely have to beat the Yankees offer. So, do you want to sign Sheets or sign Randy Johnson AND Jason Giambi/Nick Johnson/Orlando Cabrera/Furcal? The opportunity cost gives us the answer long before we run any data.
"Loyal? I'm the most loyal player money can buy." - Don Sutton
by vignette17 on Dec 9, 2008 2:16 AM PST reply actions 0 recs
For fun:
You have found an inefficency, however, it’s still insanely unlikely that you’ll be able to predict the WS winner. Instead, if you have to gamble you’d be better served by playing poker against human beings who are extremely fallible and often just not good at the game. If you have to bet online, it’s often relatively easy to predict whether teams will win more or less games.
Space.
It's a problem we face.
So we never go anywhere.
We just stay in one place.
by hazel on Dec 9, 2008 9:04 AM PST reply actions 0 recs
your advice is poker?
I’m more interested in what people think the A’s actual chances are than making a dollar…geeze, boring.
www.punditpolitics.com - Political IQ Tests, Pundit Blog, News and Opinion.
by ChadGod on Dec 9, 2008 10:25 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs
The A's, as presently constructed, are a slightly better team than the Angels, as presently constructed ...
Something like 15-1 would probably be fair for both teams, as presently constructed … no team should ever be better than 8-1 — the odds of injuries derailing any team’s playoff chances are at least as significant as any advantage they might have in a short series …
"It's for your own good. Big strong Devo knows whats best for Poppy" -- Mossback
by devo on Dec 9, 2008 12:19 PM PST reply actions 0 recs
Yay! We're better than the Angels!
It's not the results, it's how you look going about those results -- Tim McCarver
by WaddellCanseco on Dec 10, 2008 1:33 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs
my advice would be...
bet on the A’s and a few other teams whom you determine to be undervalued. Clearly if/when the A’s sign Furcal and Unit the line will be adjusted, so now would be the time to place the bet on Oakland. Also, what hazel said, all of it, but for the purposes of this post to bet on the season win-total over-unders. When ST rolls around I’ll make an over-under diary like I did two seasons ago.
As for actual chances…I can’t do a better job in assessing that than PaulThomas did in the division primer series of diaries that he did.
"Sweeney's a white Andre Ethier."--a white, drunk Billy Beane
by Cutthemullet on Dec 9, 2008 10:52 PM PST reply actions 0 recs
diaries...ChadGod doesn't know what those are, but SwisherSweet does
"Sweeney's a white Andre Ethier."--a white, drunk Billy Beane
by Cutthemullet on Dec 9, 2008 10:53 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs
i actually have been noticing the same thing the last couple weeks
"It's like déjà vu all over again." -yogi berra
by Cheezombie on Dec 10, 2008 1:58 AM PST reply actions 0 recs

by 





















