from Amazon
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Odds of the Rays winning
BPro has the Rays chances of winning the series at 48.3%, meaning that each game, they have a 49.3% chance of winning. This seems quite perplexing. The Pct3 for the Rays at the end of the season was .593 and it was .536 for the Phillies. I’m not exactly sure what Pct3 represents (I think it handles strength-of-schedule), but .593 is much bigger than .536. The average Pct3 for the AL teams is .516 and for the NL teams is .486, which seems much too tight. Anyway, I think Clay’s got a big bug here. I’ve been using the average AL team as a .5267 and the average NL team as .4767, and those are almost certainly too conservative. Anyway, we can bump up the Rays .593 by 11 points to make them a true .604. And we can bump down the Phillies by 10 points to make them a true .526. That makes the Rays chance of winning each game as .579, and the Series as 66.8%. Again, this is not me, but based on using BPro’s data.
Cool Standings has the Rays at winning the series at .535, meaning each game is .516 for the Rays. I have no idea how they figured that out.
MLB Playoff Odds, of whom I know nothing about, has the Rays at .545, meaning each game is .521.
Vegas is -135 / +115. That means that you need to bet 135$ to win 100$ on the Rays (implied series win% of .574), and 100$ to win 115$ on the Phillies (implied series win% of .465). You will note that they add up to 1.040. So, knock out .020 from each, and you get an implied series win% of .555 for the Rays, or .525 for each Rays game.
Anyway, I will await word from MGL and Rally (and anyone else out there). What I’d like to hear from you guys is:
1. True talent level for the players likely to play in the series, as a team
2. The true talent level you have for the average AL and average NL team in 2008
At this point, accepting the Rays having a .525 chance of winning each game, as Vegas implies, would make the Rays as much above the average AL team as it would make the Phillies above the average NL team. That doesn’t seem right, but I stand ready to listen to the data.