It has been my belief for a while that the baseball season does not “need” to be 162 games long. A far shorter season is more than sufficient to determine who are the best teams, with everything after that largely being limited to the re-arranging of playoff spots. In April this year, I looked at the standings after each team had played just twenty times, and placed some hypothetical $200 bets. If a team was above .500, I bet that they would make the post-season this year. If they were below .500, I bet they would not be in the playoffs.
And if they were at .500, I had no particular opinion, remained sitting on the fence, and did not place a wager.
Now, it’s time to look back and see how those wagers would have done. Below, you will find a chart of all thirty teams, in descending order their records after 20 games. The teams in green are the ones I bet on to succeed; the ones in red, to fail. You’ll also see whether the wager would have been won or lost, based on whether or not they made the post-season, after a further 142 games had been played.
Let’s take a look at the biggest individual swings and misses first. The remarkable success of the Blue Jays was the most profitable single wager, netting $640 on my $200. I’d have made even more if I had bet on them to win the AL East. Before the season, you’d have got 10/1 odds of them taking the division, and 25/1 on them winning the pennant – something they are now one series from doing. The Brewers were also profitable ($530), and before Opening Day were 22/1 for the NL. The failure of the Braves to reach the playoffs made me $500. It makes sense considering they were almost an even favorite (6/5) to win their division outright when the campaign started.
There weren’t very many losses, but the Giants (-$510) and, sadly, the Diamondbacks (-$400) were the wagers where I took the biggest bath. To be fair with regard to the latter, after twenty games, the team still had a healthy Corbin Burnes and Justin Martinez, and we didn’t know we had recently seen A.J. Puk pitch his last game of the year. If that trio had remained healthy, things might have been different. Though if we had then retained Josh Naylor and Eugenio Suarez at the deadline, would the D-backs still have gone on a 26-17 run after that, and played meaningful games into the final week? Somewhere, a butterfly flaps its wings energetically…
But a couple of things really stand out. None of the teams who were below .500 after twenty games, ended up making the playoffs. Not one of them. If you had a losing record to that point, you might as well have given up, because you weren’t going anywhere in October. Just one of the eleven, the Royals, ended up with a winning record – and that by the smallest possible margin, finishing at 82-80. Staying clear of commitment to the teams at .500 turned out to be wise, as they were close to a 50/50 proposition. Three (Boston, Cincinnati and Seattle) made it, while two (Los Angeles (AL) and Houston) did not.
Looking at teams with winning records, the match isn’t perfect, but given teams had played less than one-eighth of the schedule, I’d say getting nine of the playoff teams in my thirteen bets is still significant. For all told, that meant I won twenty-one of twenty-five wagers placed, an 84% record of which any professional gambler would be proud. However, financially, the total is less impressive: betting on the Dodgers to make the post-season, and the Rockies to miss out, is never exactly going to make your fortune. While I did come out ahead, it was only by $263.22 on my total bets of five grand. Not a bad return for six months, but I won’t be retiring on that.
No, I suspect the Tahiti condo will have to wait for the payout from this year’s Place Your Bets, which I’ll be tallying over the next week… 🙂
