8/10/12: Angels in the Outfield

Proposition: The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim will win the 2012 World Series.

Odds: 8-1

Stakes: $20

Bettors: Me, Jake

***

Most Vegas sports books have the Angels at 8/1 right now so this is pretty much right in line with the prevailing wisdom. If anything, this wager says more about our respective betting philosophies than it does about the bet itself.

Baseball added a second Wild Card team this year, increasing the odds of end-of-the-season drama but decreasing the certainty of a championship run for any of the ten teams that find their way into the postseason. Baseball has long been derided in certain circles for coddling the few privileged franchises who can afford a $150 Million-plus payroll year after year; with no hard cap and a largely ineffective luxury tax, the Yankees, Red Sox and their ilk have no real incentive to make cost-conscious decisions. The only two things preventing Major League Baseball from becoming a truly anticompetitive league are the length of the season and the number of playoff series, the former forcing teams' records toward the mean and the latter introducing additional chance into the equation.

Nobody would make the argument that the 2012 Royals are better than the 2012 Yankees, but in a three game series, it would not be unrealistic for the Royals to take two; in this same way, a team like the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals (regular season record: 83-78) can upend expectations and take home the title by catching a few lucky breaks over the course of a five or seven game set. And now, an additional Wild Card team means yet another short "series," which in this case is not a series at all but rather a one-game playoff--a B12 shot of uncertainty into the buttocks of the MLB postseason.

All this is to say that Jake is betting squarely on the side of uncertainty here, something he's always happy to do. And he has a point: even with the Angels in the pole position for one of those two Wild Card spots, the odds of them winning that one-game playoff, then overtaking (probably) the Yankees in the divisional series, and then getting through a tough Texas, Detroit or some other AL East team to make the finals (only to have to deal with the Nationals/Braves/Reds/Dodgers/Giants/etc in the World Series) makes 8-1 sound unfair...

Unless, that is, Mike Trout plays for you.