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The season continues to roll along and we’re now most of two weeks into the 2019 campaign. We’re still too early to taking anything too meaningful from the numbers save for the fact that strikeouts and home runs continue to be up. As for the individual teams and how the competition in both the American League and National League figure to shake out, there are only a few early takeaways worth changing preseason expectations.
Bad teams with good starts have mostly started to show their true colors while good teams with slow starts have begun playing better baseball. That said, teams like the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs have still vastly disappointed while others like the Seattle Mariners and San Diego Padres seem to still be playing, largely, over their heads.
As the season continues along, you can bet on all the latest MLB odds and props—including all the World Series odds—anytime at BookMaker.eu.
WORLD SERIES ODDS
Arizona Diamondbacks +10500
Atlanta Braves +2900
Baltimore Orioles +100000
Boston Red Sox +614
Chicago Cubs +1344
Chicago White Sox +27500
Cincinnati Reds +10000
Cleveland Indians +1253
Colorado Rockies +2866
Detroit Tigers +60000
Houston Astros +585
Kansas City Royals +55000
Los Angeles Angels +6300
Los Angeles Dodgers +820
Miami Marlins +100000
Milwaukee Brewers +1731
Minnesota Twins +4350
New York Mets +1957
New York Yankees +574
Oakland Athletics +4500
Philadelphia Phillies +1077
Pittsburgh Pirates +10500
St. Louis Cardinals +1700
San Diego Padres +9500
San Francisco Giants +14500
Seattle Mariners +14000
Tampa Bay Rays +6000
Texas Rangers +23500
Toronto Blue Jays +20000
Washington Nationals +1102
ODDS BREAKDOWN
The Red Sox, New York Yankees, Houston Astros, and—to a lesser extent—the Cleveland Indians opened the year as the favorites out of the AL to win it all. The Los Angeles Dodgers, Philadelphia Phillies, Washington Nationals, St. Louis Cardinals, and Milwaukee Brewers were the top-five in World Series odds out of the junior circuit with the New York Mets, Colorado Rockies and Atlanta Braves just a bit behind.
Of these favorites, we’ve seen some teams trending up here in the early going and some trending the wrong direction to start the year.
Of those teams on an upward track, we have the Dodgers whose offense has been smashing home runs since day one, leading to a NL best record through Saturday, tied with another team on the up-and-up, the Brewers.
The Dodgers have waded through some key injuries in the rotation to still have the best run differential in the game. They offense has been amazing and the pitching has managed despite those injuries. As for the Brew Crew, they’ve been playing without two of their three top relievers, one of which isn’t expected back this season. Despite that and a tough schedule to kick things off, the Brewers.
Despite the 7-2 start in nine games, Milwaukee had a +0 run differential in that span, indicating a lot of close game victories. That’s an indication of a good bullpen which the Brewers certainly have, but is hard to sustain over the course of a full season.
The Yankees and Astros are both also trending up after a very tough first week. Houston and New York are both back around .500 and playing much better baseball. That’s particularly impressive for a Yankees team with a slew of injuries. The team has 11 players on the Injured List overall, including a couple starting pitchers, a key relief arm, and a collection of everyday players including Giancarlo Stanton, Miguel Andujar and Aaron Hicks.
Despite all those injuries, the Yankees have gotten back in the win column consistently after a tough first week. That puts them ahead of their division rival Red Sox.
Boston is one of the favorite teams clearly trending downward. The biggest question about this team coming into the year was the bullpen. Ryan Braiser and Matt Barnes have pitched well, the rest of the pen has been—generally—good enough, but the starting pitching has been an issue.
Typically, with just a couple turns through the rotation that can be chalked up to a small sample size fluke, but it’s still troubling in this case given Chris Sale is 0-2 with his velocity down. David Price hasn’t exactly had a good career in his time in Boston save for last season. Rick Porcello won a Cy Young with the Sox in 2016, but otherwise has posted an ERA of at least 4.28 in the other three seasons. Nathan Eovaldi had a great year last year, but is a career 95 ERA+ pitcher. As for Eduardo Rodriguez, he’s always shown great stuff, but hasn’t shown the ability to turn that into consistent, quality performances.
Given the above, there’s certainly reason to worry in Beantown. Of course, the offense is great and will be even better, but is that enough?
Another team on the downside is the Chicago Cubs. Like Boston, it’s basically been everything going wrong. Jason Heyward showed signs of life on Saturday and Willson Contreras, Anthony Rizzo and a slew of others have gotten off to good starts offensively. But, the pitching has been horrible.
The starting pitching has been a bit better the second time through the rotation, but the numbers are still inflated. The bullpen has been a flat out disaster. Carl Edwards Jr. has already been sent back to the minors. Mike Montgomery is on the Injured List alongside Brandon Morrow. The team has yet to record a save and it’s hard to anticipate who would get the chance. Brad Brach’s arguably been the best arm so far. He’s only given up one run in four innings, he has walked six.
INTERESTING LONGSHOTS
Of the team’s most considered longshots to be playing in October, the San Diego Padres stand out as having improved their position the most. Rather than wait for the extra year of control, the Padres went ahead and put Fernando Tatis Jr. on the roster to start the year. He, alongside Manny Machado, Hunter Renfroe, Franchy Cordero, Wil Myers, and even to a lesser extent Eric Hosmer, have started off swinging the bat well, giving Padres fans hope for an above average offense for the first time in years.
The offense, however, wasn’t the biggest question. That belonged to the pitching. The Padres have been able to build a strong pen the last several years, but the starting pitching lacks any real certainty. While the names aren’t there, there is talent in the young starting arms in San Diego and the first couple times through the order things have looked very good save for a bad outing by Matt Strahm. Nick Margevicius and Chris Paddack look like the real deal while Joey Lucchesi has yet to allow a run in his first two starts.
The Tampa Bay Rays are another team slated as longshots largely because they shared a division with the Yankees and Red Sox, but they’ve gotten off to a strong start. This team is better, on paper, than the team that won 90 last year and started off far better than the either New York or Boston. Both figure to catch and pass the Rays as the season progresses. New York has already gained some ground, but Tampa Bay is a team that can stick around. The early returns, particularly from the pitching, have been overwhelmingly positive as the team allowed just 19 runs over its first nine games.
Lastly, the Seattle Mariners had some momentum out of Japan and have carried that to a 6-2 start in the states. They went 8-2 overall through their first 10 games.
Domingo Santana has had a red-hot start to the year. Tim Beckham has been fantastic. Meanwhile, players like Mitch Haniger, Edwin Encarnacion, Mallex Smith and Jay Bruce give the Mariners a good offense. The pitching was always the question, but Marco Gonzales has pitched well in three starts. Yusei Kikuchi looks like at least a solid mid-rotation arm and Felix Hernandez looked better in his first start of the year than he’s looked in years. This rotation could be better than people think.
ANALYSIS AND PREDICTION
The Red Sox’s terrible start has to cause some level of concern. Boston won 108 games last year and won the World Series. While we’re not even a couple weeks into the season, the Sox’s have been bad. The starting pitching, in particular, has struggled. The bullpen is likely to regress and the offense is better than it’s shown here in the early going, but how much? Is it enough to overcome the pitching woes?
With that, it’s hard to trust the Sox. Houston and New York got off to rough starts, too, but the Yankees and Astros have seemingly turned things around and are back on track, making them both solid picks.
Beyond those two favorites, the Dodgers look strong and had a baseball leading +30 run differential heading into Sunday. They’ve still got some pitching improvements coming off the DL soon, but have been able to pitch well enough, even with a terrible start by Joe Kelly. Of course, a strong start offensively helps.
Another interesting pick are the Phillies. Philadelphia has played well out of the gate, showing a good offense and solid defense, including going 4-1 so far against teams that were at least .500 last year. There were questions about how this team would gel after so many additions, but so far so good and there’s still rumors around the Phillies and both Craig Kimbrel and Dallas Keuchel. Either addition would potentially make a huge difference.
While the Phillies are in a difficult division, they seem to be the cream of the crop early on with the best run differential, more than doubling up the Mets who rank second in that category.
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