Both No. 1 seeds are market underdogs in their respective League Championship Series, despite earning home-field advantage with stellar regular seasons.
Friday, the Brewers host the Dodgers in the opener of the NLCS. Last year’s NL champion Dodgers are favored to advance. You have to lay -160 to bet the Dodgers to win the best-of-seven (risk $160 to win $100, or anything in that ratio). A bet on the underdog Brewers to reach the World Series returns +140 (risk $100 to win $140).
Saturday brings the ALCS, with the Red Sox at home versus the defending world-champion Astros. Houston is -140 to return to the Fall Classic. Boston is a +120 underdog.
VSiN has discussed a variety of handicapping approaches for baseball since this special feature began back in May. It’s tempting to try to jam them all into an LCS preview. Instead, let’s focus on the factors that explain why the No. 2 seeds are favored to advance over the top seeds.
- The market acknowledges playoff experience. So, it’s not surprising that last year’s World Series teams are priced to perform.
- Both have fantastic offenses, even better than is commonly realized because they play home games in parks that favor the pitcher. As we showed you recently, the Dodgers and Astros grade out very well if you focus on “road” scoring (a great shortcut for getting an “unpolluted” read on true skill sets). The Dodgers scored 5.41 runs per game on the road, followed by the Astros (5.23), Red Sox (5.04) and Brewers (4.53). That’s a huge edge for Los Angeles, and at least superiority for Houston.
- Finally, pitching analytics smile more broadly on the likely starters for both the Dodgers and Astros. Not enough room to list everybody’s xFIP (that’s a “fielding independent” stat aligned to the ERA scale that best captures pitching skill sets). But, any rotation pitcher for the Dodgers would have a clear advantage over any rotation pitcher from the Brewers. Wade Miley’s regular-season ERA of 2.57 was partly a mirage (4.30 xFIP), as was the 3.50 posted by Jhoulys Chacin (4.47 xFIP). Milwaukee will try to counteract that with creative reliever usage.
In the AL, Boston’s Chris Sale has the best xFIP in the series at 2.31. But, Houston has the next three aces with Justin Verlander (3.03), Gerrit Cole (3.04), and Charlie Morton (3.42).
Both favorites are looking to “break serve” this weekend. VSiN looks forward to digging deeper into these matchups as each series progresses.