Tuesday, February 12, 2013

2013 MLB Win Totals - Part I


Instead of just posting the current Vegas MLB odds to win the World Series, I am going to take things a step further and interpolate those W.S. odds out to 2013 win totals. There is no great scientific method that I am going to be using except for keeping consistent with the Vegas odds in the order I assign team wins.  I think I have a pretty good idea at what Vegas typically sets their highest and lowest over/under win totals at, so everything in between I can do an "eye ball" interpolation on to set the win total over/under for each team. Later in my Part II of this series, I will use a more scientific method for matching up the Vegas odds to win totals. But for now... here we go!

TeamOdds To Win W.S.% Chance to Win2013 Wins Over/Under
Angels8-18.3993
Dodgers8-18.3993
Blue Jays8-18.3993
Nationals8-18.3993
Tigers9-17.5592
Braves12-15.8190
Yankees12.5-15.5989
Reds13-15.4088
Rangers13.5-15.2188
Phillies17-14.2086
Giants17-14.2086
Red Sox20-13.6085
Cardinals20-13.6085
Rays22-13.2884
Athletics30-12.4482
Orioles40-11.8481
Diamondbacks45-11.6480
White Sox50-11.4879
Royals50-11.4879
Brewers50-11.4879
Pirates72-11.0377
Mets75-10.9975
Padres75-10.9975
Indians77.5-10.9675
Cubs100-10.7571
Rockies100-10.7571
Mariners110-10.6870
Twins125-10.6067
Marlins150-10.5063
Astros200-10.3861

Notes: 
Percent chance of winning W.S. has the Vegas juice removed.
American League has a 51.5% (Vegas) chance of winning the W.S.
National League has a 48.5% (Vegas) chance of winning the W.S.
Odds were taken from 5Dimes on 2/12/13.
In calculating the pecent chance to win the W.S., I removed the Vegas "juice".
The 2013 Over/Unders from the Atlantis came out the day after this post.

For the most part, I did a straight interpolation from (Vegas) World Series odds to an over/under on team wins.  There a couple of things that could be wrong with this.  The first comes from the possibility that the Vegas World Series odds have some bias to them.  Perhaps Vegas moved the odds up or down based on how popular a team is.  This of course has nothing to do with my methodology.  On the otherhand, something that does have to do with my methodology is that I am not controlling for the teams playing in divisions.  Divisions that may be stronger or weaker than others.  For example, the Royals might win a World Series out of every 50 times playing out of the AL Central, but what if they played out of the AL East?  Chances are that 50 number would climb.  A next step to this exercise would be to control for how hard or easy it is to win a division.  I'm not sure on the best way to do this yet, so if you have any ideas feel free to leave a comment or send me a tweet (@DodgerSims).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your conversions to % Chance to win World Series aren't correct.

Xeifrank said...

In converting from odds to % chance to win the W.S., I took out the "juice" that Vegas puts in the odds. Without taking out the juice, if you add up the odds of each team to win the W.S. it comes out to be way over 100%. Sorry for the confusion, I will add a note to the post stating this.

Gen3Blue said...

Long ago I had graduate level courses in probability and statistics, but I could not presume at this point to find any fault. But I love your simulators,and have a deep feeling for their plausabilities.