Opening a new thread for the playoffs, which start on Tuesday the 30th when all four wild card series get underway.
Here are the odds for winning the world series, according to Draft Kings. The positive number by each team shows how much money you would make should you place a $100 bet on that team.
The bettors (degenerates) are rather overvaluing the Dodgers. I know they’re a really talented team and the defending champs, but the #1 factor in determining a team’s chances is whether or not they get the bye. Even against the Reds, that’s an enormous factor that substantially reduces your chances. The four bye teams should always be the favourites.
You can’t even begin to construct an argument why the Dodgers would be +500 and the Brewers +750. That makes absolutely no sense at all. Even if you think the Brewers are an inferior team, and there is little basis for that claim, the Wild Card is an enormous factor in your chances.
The championship droughts for the postseason teams are:
76 years — Cleveland Guardians (1948)
56 years — Milwaukee Brewers (never, since 1969)
56 years — San Diego Padres (never, since 1969)
48 years — Seattle Mariners (never, since 1977)
40 years — Detroit Tigers (1984)
34 years — Cincinnati Reds (1990)
31 years — Toronto Blue Jays (1993)
16 years — Philadelphia Phillies (2008)
15 years — New York Yankees (2009)
8 years — Chicago Cubs (2016)
6 years — Boston Red Sox (2018)
0 years — Los Angeles Dodgers (2024)
This is the second longest drought in Yankee History, the prior one was as the Highlanders, 18 seasons between 1903 and 1920. Next is 14 seasons between 1982 and 1995.
The Yankees didn’t win in 1920, the Indians did; their first World Series win was in 1923 against the Giants.
The Yankees didn’t win in 1982 (or 1981, either) or 1995; they won in 1978, the Ron Guidry/Bucky Dent year, and then again in 1996.
The other long drought was between 1962 and 1977.
I’m a Seattle area native and casual Mariners fan. As a fan I’d say no because this is a team that disappoints every year. As you imply, they are the only current team to never appear in a World Series.
But speaking objectively, they don’t really have any true weakness. Before this last series against the Dodgers where they had nothing to play for and were rotating in everybody to rest starters and give everyone some practice (essentially), they’d won 16 of their last 17 games (including 11 straight home game wins). Statistically they are near or at the top in both offense and defense. They tend to generate runs like crazy, and they have a full roster of quality starters and relievers that have been clutch. Unless they have a dramatic collapse in the postseason, I think they have a legitimate chance.
Yeah. I was a longtime Seattle resident before moving overseas, and the Mariners Fade was well known. I always wondered if the northwest-corner location and increased travel over the season contributed to fatigue, but whatever it was, it was usually safe to assume a late August swoon, whatever else the team might have going for them in any given year. Kinda fun to imagine they might finally be managing to keep it together.
The Mariners are also the only team to have never been to a world series.
As another former Washington state resident who followed the Mariners closely through the Griffey years and the early Ichiro years, I’m rooting for them.
I know you know this, but the reason is that there’s a hell of a lot more degenerate gamblers in LA than there are in Milwaukee. That and the Dodgers, both because they are the Dodgers and because they are the defending champs, are perhaps the most public team in this group. Likely surpassing the Yankees pretty comfortably in the moment.
The book makers simply need to cover their asses in case the Dodgers buck the odds and if the bets are still rolling in from the casuals, why wouldn’t they want to overvalue them?