Tuley’s Takes – MLB World Series Best Bets and Predictions:
The chalkfest continued in the League Championship Series, with the Dodgers and Yankees advancing as the top seeds to meet in a World Series matchup that has a lot of history behind it. Let’s see if we can find some World Series best bets.
After underdogs won three of the four wild-card series, favorites have won five of the six series in the last two rounds, with the Mets’ upset of the Phillies being the lone exception. We obviously haven’t fared as well with our baseball bets here since that nice opening round, but the good news is these two evenly-matched teams can’t both be favored, so I believe we’re going to see value on the underdogs on a game-by-game basis (more on that below). I’m going to pass on the Yankees as a short +120 series dog and instead look to play individual games.
Let’s take a look at the World Series, starting with Game 1 on Friday night in L.A.
New York Yankees at Los Angeles Dodgers
Series price: Dodgers -130/Yankees +120
Game 1 (Friday, 8:08 p.m. ET/5:08 p.m. PT): Dodgers -122/Yankees +112
As stated above, these were the No. 1 seeds in each league, as the Dodgers won an MLB-best 98 games while the Yankees won 94. High of +115 at Golden Nugget in Las Vegas as of Wednesday afternoon). Both teams have loaded lineups, with the Dodgers averaging 5.27 runs per game (behind only the Diamondbacks at 5.47) and the Yankees averaging 5.02. They also tied for the most home runs per game at 1.46.
This is a coin-flip series in my mind, and I see it playing out similarly to the Yankees-Guardians series, which had a lot of slugfests. So, even though both teams can set their rotations and have fresh bullpen arms to start the series after clinching relatively early (Yankees last Saturday, Dodgers on Sunday), I’m still mostly excited to be betting the Overs in this series, starting with Over 8.5 in Game 1. It’s not like these teams have been winning with pitching and defense – this looks like it’s all about the offensive stars to me.
As for the sides, I’ll still with what I said above. These teams are equally matched, and the value is on the road underdogs. That goes for Game 1 with the Yankees and Gerrit Cole, as I’m not a big fan of the Dodgers’ Jack Flaherty. He is certainly not a No. 1 starter. He shut down the Mets in Game 1 of the NLCS, but in his other two postseason starts, he gave up four earned runs in 5 1/3 innings vs. the Padres. His last time out, the Mets lit him up for eight earned runs in three innings (so beware of backing him in his second start, which could come in New York).
I’m still planning to back the Yankees as dogs in Game 2 but will flip to the Dodgers as road underdogs if the Yankees are favored at home. This does look like it could be a zig-zag type of series, so I’ll probably double up with a dog coming off a loss. But that’s just me.
World Series Best Bets: Overs in every game (unless oddsmakers start inflating them); underdogs in each game, starting with Yankees +112 or so in Game 1 (high of +115 at Golden Nugget in Las Vegas as of Wednesday afternoon).
