The 2008 Mariners- A Gift from the Gambling Gods

We think that these last few years and the next few years present a particularly intruiging opportunity to bet on baseball. In the last few years, Bill James, Billy Beane and a cast of hundreds of so-called Sabermetricians have shown intelligent and open-minded people a new way to look at baseball. However, because baseball is so riddled in "tradition" and "history," the mainstream media (and thus the public) have been slow to catch on. If you don't believe me, try reading a few days worth of posts at Fire Joe Morgan. You'll be amazed that the subjects of their well-deserved and well-written ridicule get paid to write/talk about sports.

For sports betters, this environment is a perfect storm. We have new tools available to us to predict long-term results with greater accuracy, while the media rails against the tools and tells the public that their oversimplified way of looking at the game is correct. And the public bets accordingly, giving us advantageous lines.

The best place to exploit this is in wagering on futures and over-under win totals. I'll leave the discussion of futures to Vegaswatch and talk about one example of this "old-school" way of thinking. What if I told you that there was a team that was: (1) outscored by its opponents by 20+ runs over the course of the 2007 season; (2) had made a trade to acquire a #1 starter, but had traded away a top MLB-ready outfield prospect and a very effective lefty reliever to get him and had been almost universally panned in baseball circles for the trade; and (3) had a roster with an average age two years higher than the MLB average? You'd probably say that this team would be lucky to sniff .500 in 2008, right?

Well, not according to ESPN's panel of experts. With the exception of Sabermetrician Keith Law, all of ESPN's "experts" predicted this team, the 2008 Seattle Mariners, would win 90+ games. Why? Because they think the same way they did 20 years ago- they won 88 games last year and added a top-of-the-line starter. How can they go wrong?

The answer, of course, is that they can go wrong because they were very, very lucky to win 88 games last year, and the odds of them getting that lucky again are not too great. Sure they've added a starter who might be worth a couple extra games, but people should not think of Seattle as an 88-win team in 2007. Talentwise, they were a 79-win team that caught a couple breaks. Almost every computer projection put their win total for 2008 in the 70s, many in the low 70s. Adding to the disparity between public perception and projected results is the fact that the Mariners have a number of stars whose public profile far outweighs their contributions to victory. Ichiro, their unquestioned marquee name, consistently finishes at or near the top of the "batting race," but his relatively low number of walks and homers leads to the conclusion that he's not as valuable as the casual, non-BP-reading fan might think. Felix Hernandez had an absolutely amazing outing in one of the most closely watched games of the 2007 season- Matsusaka's debut with the Red Sox- that left a lot of casual observers with the idea that this guy was already an established star instead of a guy with great stuff who hasn't put it together yet. And so on with Sexson, Beltre, Vidro, etc.

When the over/unders for season wins came out, the books had an unusual problem. On the one hand, the public was being told that the Mariners were a 90-win team. On the other hand, trusted statistical analysis (as well as common sense) suggested that this might not be the case. So where to set the line? They settled on the mid-80s. People who watch ESPN all day no doubt hammered the Over, and people who look a little closer (including Hambone and myself) played the Under. We'll see how it plays out. I have my suspicions. In the meantime, if you missed the boat on this you can continue to fade the Mariners until the public realizes that this is probably not a playoff team. You'd be shocked at how long it takes for them to catch on.