095: Odds to make and win the College World Series
A look at the Super Regional pairings and future odds.
16 teams remain in the NCAA College Baseball tournament. Eight of those sixteen teams will advance to Omaha and the College World Series next week. There are eight three-game series scheduled for this weekend.
The way the NCAA seeds the baseball tournament is quirky. Geography matters. The home and away rules are an over correction to fairness.
Zero two seeds from any of the 16 regionals advanced to the second weekend of the tournament. There are 10 one seeds, a quintet of two-seeds, and Evansville as the lone four seed that advanced.
The College World Series is guaranteed at least two participants from the ACC or SEC. If all the favorites hold or every home team advances, the College World Series would be made up four SEC and four ACC teams1.
Aaron Moore, VSiN contributor, likens the two leagues to King Kong and Godzilla in his latest betting preview. Moore makes a great point, it’s a shame none of the bookmakers are putting up derivative numbers like the SEC and ACC against the field, or most wins per conference2.
Moore’s betting preview was quite informative, so let’s try to put the numbers in a tabular format. The table below shows:
odds for each team to advance to the CWS and win the national title
the probability or percentage chance to do the same
it groups the Super Regionals together by the bracket
for example, Knoxville and Tallahassee follow each other in the table because those Super Regionals are matched together and the winners will play each other in Omaha
Every home team is favored in the Super Regional. At least the home and away designations make more sense in this format.
Kentucky and Georgia are the two home favorites that look to be most vulnerable to an upset. There is real value on Oregon State and NC State winning a road series.
Tennessee and Texas A&M are the overwhelming favorites. As a reminder, the number one overall seed has only won the College World Series once since 1999. It might be the reason why some books actually favor the Aggies to win the national title.
A comical outcome this weekend is if somehow all the SEC teams lose. While unlikely, it’s not impossible. It just means more money3.
Earmuffs
Video reviews are a bunch of bullshit most of the time.
The earmuffs or signaling for a review is an absolute drag of the viewing experience for all sports. It’s rough in soccer. It makes little sense in basketball. And it gets even more silly in baseball.
During the UNC-Long Island game last Friday, there was a review in the 9th inning that was a way to waste two plus minutes of everyone’s time. Color commentator, Gaby Sanchez, even applauded the review as gamesmanship and a way to delay the game or make UNC pitcher, Matt Poston, wait.
Long Island’s Jake Mastillo was out by a foot or more at first base after third baseman Gavin Gallaher fielded a weak ground ball, slipped, and still easily got the out.
Even when you slow it down, it’s not all that close.
It’s no surprise that the NCAA has 19 pages of rules about video reviews. College baseball games are already long enough, we don’t need to waste time on “gamesmanship” reviews.
If you’re looking for a betting preview ahead of this weekend, check out VSiN. You can also find the code for the table in this post here. Enjoy the Supers.
Can you imagine a CWS of all the underdogs? Evansville, UConn, Kansas State, West Virginia, Oregon State, NC State, Florida, and Oregon.
If you find any of these numbers in any markets, drop it in the comments, please and thank you. Seems like a good bet to make.
Some SEC coaches make more than MLB coaches. It’s a big business and I’m confident SEC teams are already poaching players in the portal. We should grade ACC coaches on more of a curve considering the resource gap.
I think there’s some accounting for betting juice missing here as all these odds add up to more than 100%.