Like most humans, I’m sure, I had never looked at an MLB season win total prior to the 2012 season. Fortunately, one day I came across this piece by Jonah Keri while sitting in that cube where I reside for roughly 40 hours a week. I do not expect too many people to read this and even fewer will click that link, so I will just explain the baseball season over/under. It’s simple. Vegas bookmakers put out a number for each MLB team as the total number of expected wins for that season. Our job as the bettor is to decide whether we think the actual win total realized at the end of a season for a particular team will be over or under the number bookmakers supplied.
For instance: the O/U on the 2012 Detroit Tigers was set at 93.5 after the offseason acquisition of Prince Fielder. Keri thought the infield defense would be historically bad and further that their closer, Valverde, could not repeat his 49 for 49 performance in save opportunities from the previous season. Keri goes into more detail but suffice to say, he liked the UNDER for the Tigers last season, and it was the over/under for which he had the highest confidence. The Tigers finished the 2012 season with an 88-74 record, which meant in college he would have bought everyone pizza that day, which is a roundabout way of saying he would have won that bet if he ended up actually placing it (since 88 is under 93.5).
I was very intrigued after reading Keri’s column and decided to go home that night and do some research. My thought was: betting something small like $5 ($5 is, like, nothing. I’m so rich, man.) makes a game so much more interesting than a game in which you have wagered $0. Why not make one bet, which is essentially a combination of 162 bets? I will tell you why I ended up not betting any season O/U’s. I know I just bragged about how I sometimes have at least $5 in discretionary income, but I didn’t want to make this kind of long-term bet (called a Future) unless I was going to put some serious coin on it and I didn’t feel comfortable doing that/I’m too poor to do that.
And just because I didn’t make any of these bets last season, doesn’t mean I haven’t fantasized about throwing fat stacks on several teams next season and then ultimately getting too nervous and not placing any/being too poor to place any. While most Americans are busy thinking about things like Abraham Lincoln (gotcha) on a daily basis, I’ve been trying to project the Reds 2013 win total since they day they were eliminated from the playoffs. I will walk you through some of the factors I’ve been considering. These O/U’s won’t be released until March, so if we start thinking about this stuff now, we’ll have plenty of time to make an informed wager.
In order to come up with a projection for 2013, we need to look closely at 2012 and determine what will be the same in 2013, and what will change in 2013. We need to identify the repeatable things that have happened and the more flukey things, which fans should not count on seeing in back-to-back seasons. Perhaps most importantly, we need to look at individual players to determine where they are in their career to project increased or decreased productivity and take the team aggregate of this factor.
For many teams, it would be way too early to even think about the 2013 win total because we would not have a great idea of what their roster would look like once the 2013 season commences, however, the Reds are at a unique position this offseason where they are not going to be signing too many free agents. The Reds 2013 roster will be very similar to the 2012 roster. I project the only change in the eight position players will be the vacancy left by Rolen, to be filled by Frazier, which I consider an improvement but what do I know, Dusty seemed to think Rolen was better than Frazier come the 2012 playoffs.
First off, when looking at the lineup/run scoring, I would predict a very similar output in 2013 to what we saw in 2012. I believe the gains realized from the –Rolen +Frazier equation will be erased by Ludwick regression in 2013. Interestingly, I keep thinking of Jonny Gomes’ first half of the 2010 versus the rest of his time with the Reds, while trying to project Ryan Ludwick. Pitchers eventually caught on to the curveball being the out-pitch for Gomes (and, boy, did he go cold), while conversely, the fastball has lead to Ludwick’s struggles. I worry how much time Dusty will give Ludwick in the four-hole splitting up Votto and Bruce if Ludwick is going to turn back into the player I think he is. The most important thing for scoring runs isn’t to have all of your best players at the top of the lineup, necessarily, it’s to have clustering of your best hitters and Dusty loves to put someone between the Reds best two hitters. If Dusty continues this trend because he doesn’t want Bruce and Votto (Votto had a .288/.413/.475 slash line against lefties in 2012 compared to Ludwick’s .263/.360/.576) batting back-to-back, we’ll need a good season from our third best hitter and also hope he’s batting fourth. All in all, since we continue to see players like Cozart and/or Stubbs batting 1st or 2nd, another player splitting up our best two hitters and our best contact hitter (Hanigan) batting 8th, I would not consider that great clustering. Perhaps the biggest factor in all of this, though, will be whether Votto’s power returns from his knee procedure because it never came all the way back last season. Votto hit zero home runs after returning. I would predict more of the same or a slight decrease from an offense that ranked 9th out of 16 NL teams in run scoring.
The other area we need to look at is run prevention. The Reds allowed the fewest runs of any National League team last season, which is incredible. Three factors allowed this to happen: A really good starting pitching rotation, an excellent bullpen and the best health I’ve ever seen from a starting rotation. The main reason I believe the Reds will slip in the run prevention category is because I don’t believe the incredible health of the starting rotation is repeatable, which means more starts from Minor Leaguers and more runs given up. A player outside the Reds Opening Day starting five only started one game for the Reds last season; it was the back-end of a double-header. And while I believe replacing Leake with Chapman as a starter would improve our starting five (and make the bullpen worse, but still a net gain), I’m also a huge fan of the Law of Large Numbers. It is probably my favorite law of all time. It basically states that while you can flip a coin “heads” three times in a row, the more you flip it, the closer your “heads” observation moves to 50%. I don’t believe this strictly applies to health as I would consider health somewhat of a skill (some athletes are less prone to injury), I also certainly wouldn’t be surprised if the Reds pitching staff experience injury at a rate higher than average in 2013. And briefly, the Astros move to the AL in 2013 so that variable would point to a decreased ability to prevent runs/win games over the course of a season.
As a Reds, Blue Jackets and Browns fan I have acquired an ability to temper my excitement for my favorite sports teams. I would not consider myself a pessimist, per se, but some of my friends probably would. Hopefully there are a few positives for 2013 which I have not taken into consideration, but given the factors I have detailed above, I would expect the win total of 97 in 2012 to come down in 2013. Given my lack of experience in this type of wager, I’m unsure of what Vegas will ultimately have for the Reds win total. Also, in such a preliminary state, we may have a good idea of the Reds roster, but we do not know about the rest of the division (Milwaukee/Josh Hamilton speculation). I could see the number being right around 90.5; with action on the over. I could be convinced of anything as low as 87.5, but I think at that number public opinion could prevail with about 85% of money coming in on the over. I don’t believe Vegas would necessarily want that. Let’s see how this plays out.
