MLB 2014 Odds To Win World Series

World Series Odds as of 3/1/2014

Rank	Team	Odds to 1
1	Dodgers	6.5
2	Tigers	9
3	Cardinals	10
4	Red Sox	12
5	Yankees	12
6	Rays	12
7	Nationals	12
8	Giants	16
9	Rangers	16
10	Athletics	18
11	Braves	20
12	Angels	20
13	Reds	22
14	Pirates	28
15	Mariners	28
16	Orioles	33
17	Royals	33
18	Phillies	33
19	Blue Jays	33
20	Indians	40
21	Diamondbacks	50
22	Cubs	50
23	White Sox	50
24	Brewers	50
25	Padres	50
26	Mets	66
27	Rockies	75
28	Marlins	100
29	Twins	100
30	Astros	200

Source: Bovada

How Good Is Good?

Question: In terms of win probability for one game, how much of a bearing does one superstar hitter have on his team?

Well, a lot of this has to do with who this superstar hitter is being replaced with. Any easy and somewhat crude method to figuring this out is to find the difference in true talent in terms of WAR/150 of the superstar player and his replacement. You want to make sure you get as accurately as possible an estimate on the true talent WAR/150 of these two players. It will be somewhat subjective, but not too difficult.

Let's take someone like Carlos Gonzalez and for arguments sake, let's call him a 5.0 WAR/150 player. Let's pretend the Rockies are going to sit Gonzalez and in his place start Ryan Spilborghs and let's call Spilborghs a 1.5 WAR/150 player. Keep in mind we are not doing any adjustments for the handedness of the pitcher being faced in this example, and in the next iteration you would definitely need to make this additional adjustment.

So we have a 5.0 minus 1.5 equals 3.5 WAR/150 difference. Since we are attempting to determine how this changes the Rockies win probability for one single game, we need to change units from per 150 games to a single game. We need to then divide 3.5 by 150 which gets us 0.02333 which is how much win probability the Rockies would lose by starting Spilborghs over Carlos Gonzalez, with the one above mentioned caveat. Let's say the Rockies were originally favored to win this game with a win probability of 60.00%. You could now safely adjust this number down to 57.67%. As far as what this would look like on a Vegas money line the adjustment would go from -150 favorites to -136.

This is a quick, dirty and easy method to use when you need to make a quick calculation on how much the win probability should change when a hitter is removed/added to the lineup. The same thing can be done when multiple players are involved, you will just need to add up all the WAR/150 of all the players taken out of the game and offset it against all the WAR/150 of all the players used to replace them.

Converting From A Win Percentage To A Money Line

I was recently asked if there was a formula for converting a win percentage to a Money Line. For example, if we think a team has a 65% chance of winning a game, what would the "fair" money line be for that game?

Money lines are generally given as a negative number for the favorite and a positive number for the underdog. There are cases that both teams will be listed with a negative number if the odds are very even and there is juice on the game. A site that has a dime juice, will have the money line listed as -105/-105 on a 50/50 game. Without the juice, both teams would be listed as +100 or -100 (same thing).

Now back to our request for a formula for converting from win percentage to money line. Since the favorite will be listed as a negative number and the underdog as a positive number, we have to use two similar but slightly different formulas. One for the favorite and one for the underdog.

Depending on what type of juice you’d be expecting you’d add/subtract an offset in. With a dime juice you’d subtract a nickel (from -150 to -155) from the favorite and subtract a nickel from the dog too (+150 to +145). Let's ignore the juice for now, as it can easily be added in at the end of the process.

P = Probability of the team winning
X = Money Line (not adjusted for juice)

Favorites: X = -100P / (1 – P)

Underdog X = (100 – 100P) / P

Example, Team A has a 65% chance of winning and Team B has a 35% chance of winning.

ML for Team A would be:
= (-100 * .65) / (1 – .65)
= -65 / .35
= -185.7

ML for Team B would be:
= (100 – (100 * .35)) / .35
= (100 – 35) / .35
= 65 / .35
= +185.7

Let's round it off a little bit and call this a -186/+186 game. So if a team was listed on the money line as -186 favorite (with no juice) they would have a 65% chance of winning according to the money line. If you were to add a dime juice to this line you would end up with something like -191/+181. But keep in mind that juice tends to increase as a team becomes a larger and larger favorite.

Feel free to use my handy Money Line to Win Percentage Calculator, via Google Docs.