Ultra Sports Bet

Let me say this up front – I hate the Red Sox and I will be looking for a way to pick against them. They are smug and superior and they make me throw up a little every time I see them. I respect several of their individual players, but as a team I don’t have any time for them at all.

That being said, they are the better team. By a lot. They have better pitching, a better bullpen, better hitting, more depth, and infinitely more experience. They are the favorites, and they unquestionably should be.

The problem, in my mind, is that they are way, way undervalued. They are currently (-231) to win the series. That puts the Rockies at (+211). You can’t tell me that that’s not an unbalanced, public driven set of numbers. Or rather, you can tell me all you want, but I won’t listen.

Exhibit A in my case is the first game. Jeff Francis, Colorado’s ace faces Josh Beckett. Francis is at (+202), and Beckett is at (-220). If you look back over the season, though, you’ll see that these two pitchers met up on a cold June day at Fenway. Francis went five scoreless innings, and Beckett was rocked for six runs in the same five innings. That was before Colorado was ridiculously hot, too. Francis was never anywhere near (+202) on the season, so he clearly shouldn’t be in this case. That means that there is value in him in game one. In there is value in the first game, and the price of the first game is a significant factor in the series price, then I would reason that there is also value in the Rockies for the series.

The Rockies are also getting discredited because of their eight day break. It’s definitely unfortunate, and no team in the history of baseball has had one as long (just think about that for a second), but the team is very aware of the problem, and has been very proactive in their responses to it. I think the team was playing so well because they were playing as a team and supporting each other, and that won’t have to change if the break was managed properly. The team will also be able to cultivate a powerful ‘us against the world’ mentality, because the odds clearly reflect that few people give them a chance.

In the end, it comes down to this – I have playoff profits locked in, and I would rather take a shot at the big returns that Colorado promises (especially since the price is inflated) than take a few pennies back in return for a bet on Boston. Pick: Colorado.

UPDATE: Wow, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I knew that Boston was the better team, and I knew that it was probably by a bit, but I had no idea just how good they were. That was a ridiculously embarrassing series. I tip my hats to the Red Sox (and resist the temptation to spit in their direction).

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