What must the Brewers do to get market respect?!
Though the Brew Crew has been extremely impressive down the stretch of the regular season and through the playoffs, betting markets still see the Dodgers as the much superior side as we head to Game 3 of the NLCS at Chavez Ravine.
The Dodgers were road favorites in both games at Milwaukee, with Clayton Kershaw laying around -140 in Friday’s opener … and Hyun-Jin Ryu laying -125 Saturday. Given the value of home-field advantage, the quality of Dodgers pitching, and general market respect given to defending league champions, you know they’ll be chalk in all three home games.
Sports books made Walker Buehler a -160 favorite over Jhoulys Chacin in Monday’s matchup when the projected pairing was announced Saturday evening. Though, we know managers have been getting creative with pitching strategy this postseason. It’s possible we’ll see a different pairing on the board before first pitch.
If the series makes it back to Milwaukee? Well, it’s possible the Dodgers would be priced as favorites in all six or seven games.
This despite the following, the Brewers …
- Are 12-1 in their past 13 games, and 27-8 in their past 35 games.
- Swept Colorado 3-0 in the divisional round, winning the scoreboard 13-2, and the sum of “total bases plus walks” by a combined 61-26. (The Rockies couldn’t even find the merry-go-round, let alone get one started.)
- Had a higher volume of total bases plus walks in both games of the current series. The Brewers won that stat 21-16 in their 6-5 Game 1 victory over the Dodgers, and 19-14 despite losing the return bout 4-3. Saturday afternoon, Milwaukee could turn two homers, two doubles, four walks, and three singles into only three runs. That composite would normally yield something closer to five runs. The two homers were solo shots.
That’s more than enough to suggest that the Brewers shouldn’t be viewed as a doormat despite their game-by-game underdog role. Can they break serve at least once in LA? Even Dodger-shaded betting odds themselves suggest that’s reasonably likely. There’s a difference between being favored to win three individual games and being favored to sweep.
Even if the Dodgers were -200 on a no-vigorish line in every home game, that would only be 67 percent to win … 33 percent to lose each time out. Add those up (.67 plus .67 plus .67), and the Dodgers win 2.01 games, Milwaukee 0.99 games. Two out of three ain’t bad, but it ain’t enough to sweep! And, the Dodgers won’t be that big a favorite in every game anyway.
Do you agree with the math that the Brewers and Dodgers will be playing for a while? There is great baseball ahead this week. We’ll check in Tuesday with Astros/Red Sox as the ALCS heads to Houston for its midsection.
