MLB World Series 2022 Odds: Breaking Down Chances of Final 4 Teams
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What to make of Aaron Judge and the Yankees after they barely survived a tough ALDS? (Mary DeCicco/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
The race for the 2022 World Series championship began with a robust 30 teams back in April. Over the next six months, it was gradually whittled down to just 12.
Now, only four remain.
MLB @MLB
We started at 12 and we’re down to 4. #Postseason
With Major League Baseball’s 2022 postseason now into the Championship Series round, we’re here to provide fresh breakdowns of the surviving teams’ chances of winning the World Series. After all, we now have a better picture of how their regular-season performances did or didn’t foretell how they would perform in the playoffs.
Some things have changed for the better. Others, for the worse. As we see it, such things should influence each team’s championship odds accordingly.
With all odds courtesy of DraftKings, let’s get to it.
San Diego Padres
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Denis Poroy/Getty Images
NL Wild Card Series: 2-1 over New York Mets
NL Division Series: 3-1 over Los Angeles Dodgers
NL Championship Series: 0-1 vs. Philadelphia Phillies
Why They Are Championship Material
All the San Diego Padres did in the first two rounds of the playoffs was knock off a 101-win team and a 111-team, all while seemingly expending little effort.
Rather than an 89-win club that’s playing above its head, the Padres more so look like the ultra-scary unit they were supposed to be after they loaded up at the Aug. 2 trade deadline. And this is despite the fact that the big piece of that haul, Juan Soto, has remained relatively cool.
NL MVP candidate Manny Machado, who has two home runs, and Trent Grisham have been picking up the slack for Soto. Grisham’s contributions have arguably been greater, as he’s turned back the clock to his 2020 breakout season with three long balls and turned in some dazzling defense in center field.
MLB @MLB
Trent Grisham is doing it all! 😱
(MLB x @TMobile) pic.twitter.com/FfBYV7q88O
San Diego’s run prevention has likewise been aided by five excellent starts from aces Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove, as well as stellar relief work from Robert Suárez and Josh Hader. The latter has allowed only one hit while whiffing seven of the 15 batters he’s faced.
Why They Are Not Championship Material
If nothing else, Grisham seems overdue for a cooldown. Even if he did so with a decent supply of power, he still hit just .184 in the regular season.
If that happens, the Padres will need someone else to help Machado carry the offensive load. Soto and Josh Bell would be the best candidates, but both have shown only occasional flashes of their best selves since arriving in San Diego.
Let’s also not ignore that the Padres rotation has question marks after Darvish and Musgrove. Mike Clevinger has been hittable all year, while Blake Snell is always liable to lose the strike zone at any given moment.
DraftKings World Series Odds: +500
These odds are too low. You can say we’re reading too much into a small-sample-size hot streak and not enough into the club’s lifeless loss to the Phillies in the first game of the NLCS, but pardon us for being firmly in camp “The Padres Always Had This in Them.”
New York Yankees
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Elsa/Getty Images
AL Wild Card Series: Bye
AL Division Series: 3-2 over Cleveland Guardians
AL Championship Series: vs. Houston Astros
Why They Are Championship Material
As dicey as things were looking after Games 2 and 3, there’s one thing in particular that led the New York Yankees past the Cleveland Guardians in the Division Series.
This would be the long ball, of which the Yankees hit nine to the Guardians’ three. Not that this was especially surprising, of course, as the Yankees hit literally twice as many homers as Cleveland during the regular season while leading the league with 254.
Likewise, it’s not surprising that the Yankees’ home-run advantage correlated with them winning the series. Home runs and wins have tended to go hand-in-hand within the playoffs in recent years, and that remains the case in 2022:
Sarah Langs @SlangsOnSports
so far this postseason:
– Teams to score first are 19-7
– Teams to out-homer opponents are 13-5 (25-2 last PS)
– 45.7% of runs have been scored via HR (was 39.8% in ’22 RS, 49.0% in ’21 PS)
Following a regular season in which he led the majors in strikeouts for the second time in four seasons, the ALDS also saw Gerrit Cole further hone his ace bona fides. He won his starts in Game 1 and Game 4, allowing just three runs over 13.1 innings while striking out 16.
Why They Are Not Championship Material
Though the Yankees managed to survive the ALDS, the series only amplified lingering concerns about their bullpen.
Said pen experienced a substantial drop-off from the first half (5th in fWAR) to the second half (15th) of the regular season. Injuries played a role in that and are still playing a role in the form of Clay Holmes’ uncertain day-to-day availability.
Furthermore, the Yankees didn’t exactly silence concerns about the one-dimensionality of their offense against Cleveland. They hit just .182 for the series, and only four of their 20 runs came home via something other than a home run.
DraftKings World Series Odds: +350
These odds are too low. While the Yankees may be a flawed team, the notion that they’re the third-best bet for the World Series out of the four surviving clubs is a bit much.
Philadelphia Phillies
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Drew Hallowell/MLB Photos via Getty Images
NL Wild Card Series: 2-0 over St. Louis Cardinals
NL Division Series: 3-1 over Atlanta
NL Championship Series: 1-0 vs. San Diego Padres
Why They Are Championship Material
For starters, how about their ace duo of Zack Wheeler and Aaron Nola?
The two right-handers were dynamite down the stretch, combining for a 1.82 ERA in the final month of the season. They’ve kept that up by allowing just three runs in their five playoff starts, with all three of those runs coming by way of weakly hit ground balls (see here, here and here) off Wheeler in Game 2 of the NLDS.
Though the Phillies offense was plenty good in the regular season, its postseason-high 34 runs feels like an illustration of how great it could have been if Bryce Harper was healthy and productive all year. The two-time MVP already has more homers (four) in the playoffs than he hit after he returned from a thumb injury in August.
Philadelphia Phillies @Phillies
And that is why we call him the MV3. pic.twitter.com/oKZjyE0KUE
Otherwise, Philadelphia’s bullpen is perhaps in the best shape it’s been in all season. José Alvarado and Seranthony Dominguez have eight scoreless appearances between them in the playoffs, and now veteran closer David Robertson is back from fluke calf injury.
Why They Are Not Championship Material
It isn’t much of a secret that the Phillies were defensively challenged dur ing the regular season. To wit, they finished 29th in outs above average.
This weakness hasn’t remained entirely hidden in the playoffs. With Rhys Hoskins being the primary offender, poor defense indeed did as much as anything to cause the club’s lone loss. Courtesy of Alec Bohm, the defense question briefly reared its head again in Game 1 of the NLCS on Tuesday.
If that doesn’t bite the Phillies going forward, their rotation options after Wheeler and Nola might. Neither Ranger Suárez nor Noah Syndergaard was able to make it to the fourth inning in their respective starting assignments in the Division Series.
DraftKings World Series Odds: +270
These odds are too high. As well as the Phillies have played so far in the postseason, their regular season was an up-and-down affair that resulted in just 87 wins.
Houston Astros
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Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images
AL Wild Card Series: Bye
AL Division Series: 3-0 over Seattle Mariners
AL Championship Series: vs. New York Yankees
Why They Are Championship Material
It’s simple, really. The Houston Astros are the only one of this season’s four 100-win clubs still standing, not to mention the only undefeated team of these playoffs.
They didn’t have the easiest time dispatching the Seattle Mariners, but all anyone’s going to remember years from now are the clutch home runs that got the job done. Namely: Jeremy Peña’s go-ahead shot in the 18th inning of Game 3 and Yordan Álvarez’s historic blasts from Games 1 and 2.
Houston otherwise owes its ALDS sweep to its bullpen, which handled 20.1 innings and allowed just one run. This is indeed the same pen that led the majors with a 2.80 ERA in the regular season, only now it has hard-throwing Cristian Javier to work in a multi-inning tole.
In spite of Justin Verlander’s 10-hit, six-run dud in Game 1 of the ALDS, the Astros also have the best starting trio of the four teams still left in the playoffs. Verlander, Framber Valdez and Lance McCullers Jr. pitched to a 2.34 ERA over their last 24 starts of the regular season.
Why They Are Not Championship Material
The Astros may have swept the Mariners, yet the opposite might have happened if the Mariners had gotten some lucky breaks and maybe made some better decisions.
It wasn’t a dominant effort on Houston’s part, and there are angles from which that looks like a sort of microcosm. Whether this year’s club is as good as the 2017, 2018 or 2019 iterations is debatable, specifically where offense is concerned.
Plus, there’s room for concern with Verlander. It’s a positive that his velocity was fine in Game 1 of the ALDS, yet one still wonders how much gas a 39-year-old coming off Tommy John surgery can have left after 179 innings.
DraftKings World Series Odds: +140
These odds are just right. If anyone has a reasonable argument for why the Astros aren’t the favorite for the World Series, we’d honestly like to hear it.
Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.
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