5% of the Season is Over, and I Have Learned Nothing
I do not like early-season cold-weather baseball. I just find it uninteresting. MLB takes a back seat to March Madness and then another back seat to the Masters. The first couple weeks of the season really just serve to reinforce or justify your preseason prognostications. If a player I like or bet on is playing well, obviously, my preseason MLB futures bets were correct, and I am awesome. If a player I bet on is not playing well, it’s just early season variance, extended spring training, or any number of other excuses. I don’t love to extrapolate anything from the first 5% of the season or any 5% of the season. But let’s take a look at the MLB futures markets and see where everything is at the 5% mark.
NL MVP
Mookie Betts currently leads MLB in just about every category. Betts flipped Acuna as the favorite for MVP, and Betts will likely remain one of the front runners barring injury or a serious slump.
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Acuna and Bryce Harper follow Betts in the odds at 6/1 and 9/1, with Shohei Ohtani the only other player under 10. Oneil Cruz down to 22/1 is something to keep an eye on, especially with the Pirates’ strong start. FanDuel and DraftKings have a disagreement on Cruz, with FanDuel still offering him at 55/1. I think the FanDuel number is better for the book and the bettor. I’d be happy to write Cruz bets at 55/1 all month.
Seiya Suzuki, another guy I mentioned last week, is available at 70/1 at FanDuel and 50/1 at DraftKings. It’s not necessarily something to pull the trigger on right now, but a strong first week (9 hits in 27 at bats, 2 home runs, .333/.379/.972) has him on my radar. The reality of the NL market is that it’s very top-heavy, and somebody would have to do something extraordinary to push Betts or Acuna out of the top spots anytime soon.
No play for me here but the top of the market is more or less correct with Betts and Acuna leading the way.
AL MVP
Another case of favorites flipping positions, but this time, they are teammates. As predicted by me, the winningest guest in VSiN history, it took less than a week for Juan Soto to swap places with Aaron Judge. Soto is now 4/1 for MVP at DraftKings, and +360 at FanDuel. I added a bet on Juan Soto this week. $1,000 at 4/1 for Juan Soto to win MVP at DraftKings. I have some money on Jose Ramirez at 25/1 and Wyatt Langford at 500/1, but it’s a similar situation in both MVP markets. Guys like Soto and Betts, when playing on the Dodgers or Yankees, will always be the front runners when they are playing well early. You will never win an argument trying to justify why Bobby Witt Jr. or Julio Rodriguez should be considered while Betts and Soto are doing their things. It just doesn’t work that way with voting awards.
I think the market has correctly flipped Soto and Judge, but I would continue to drop Judge. Teammates don’t often finish 1-2 in MVP voting, and, again, I’d probably want to write bets on Judge right now. There’s also the whole issue of Yordan Alvarez, and one hill I’ll die on is that Yordan Alvarez > Aaron Judge. If there was a market I could bet that Alvarez will finish with more MVP votes/points than Judge, I would gladly bet that. This week it’s about opening a position on Juan Soto, though, and that’s my only bet for either MVP market.
MLB futures bets: Juan Soto – AL MVP: 4/1 at DraftKings risking $1,000
NL Cy Young
According to the most reliable models out there right now, Frankie Montas has been the best pitcher in the NL through 11.2 innings. Zac Gallen, Zack Wheeler, Merrill Kelly and Tyler Glasnow are the other names at the top of the leaderboard. If I was forced to make some bets this week in this market I like FanDuel’s numbers on Shota Imanaga and Chris Sale both 40/1, but I didn’t see anything that I had to run out and bet this week.
AL Cy Young
Shane Bieber is technically the leader for the AL Cy Young after two starts. Other names like Cristian Javier, Garrett Crochet, Nick Pivetta, and Nathan Eovaldi sit near the top of the list so far, but again there’s really not much you can take away from 12-13 innings of pitching. That didn’t stop me from making a couple of bets.
MLB futures bet: Shane Bieber – AL Cy Young: 11/1 at DraftKings risking $250
MLB futures bet: Cole Ragans 12/1 at FanDuel risking $250
I bet Ragans a few times before the season, and I’m just adding a bit more to the position here. Bieber is a new one. Not sure what I’m going to do with it, but he’s won before, and he’s currently at the top of the leaderboard, so I’m in at 11/1
NL Rookie of the Year
Don’t get too caught up in ROY races in early April. In a lot of cases, some of the main contenders haven’t even been called up from AAA yet. In the NL Yoshinobu Yamamoto is still the front runner at +265. Jackson Chourio has jumped up to second favorite at 4/1. Shota Imanaga, who I mentioned weeks ago, has jumped into the mix with a strong nine-strikeout first start and is currently +650 at DraftKings, and 9/1 at FanDuel.
I can’t comprehend making this market and having two pitchers under 10/1 this early in the season. But then I look and I see more pitchers at 15/1 ( Jared Jones) and 18/1 (Kyle Harrison), and its clear to me that nobody knows what they are doing or they aren’t paying attention to this market. I guess they are busy with NBA Sixth Man of the Year or something. But I just can’t comprehend how bad the odds are for this market.
Yamamoto’s price is terrible. Can’t bet him at +260. Chourio a contender but at 4/1, pass on that. Imanaga +650, if you listened to me you could have got him at 5-6x that a couple weeks ago.
I said it in a previous article, and I’ll repeat it again here because I’m pretty sure nobody reads what I write or even knows I’m writing in the first place, but the only NL pitcher I’d be on for ROY at the current prices is Paul Skenes at 50/1 at FanDuel. Skenes is a few weeks away from making his MLB debut in Pittsburgh, and he’s the only pitcher I think has any value at the current odds. Based on the current odds, I have to assume the point of this market is not to take any bets because this really might be the worst future odds I can recall.
AL Rookie of the Year
Wyatt Langford is the new favorite at +255 with teammate Evan Carter dropping a slight bit to +310. Carter is in a 0/15 slump to start 2024. If you haven’t been paying attention, now would be the time to buy Jackson Holliday at 5/1 (FanDuel) or (+450 DraftKings). He has nothing left to prove in AAA. Holliday’s Norfolk team exploded for 26 runs last night. Its only a matter of time until the O’s call him up.
Most Home Runs
Aaron Judge is still a 7/1 favorite at DraftKings and FanDuel because I guess he hit a lot of home runs two seasons ago, and he’s really popular. But I’m still not betting on the guy who couldn’t make it through spring training healthy and has a bad toe to hit the most home runs, I’d rather bet on almost anyone else.
Pete Alonso has drifted out to 10/1 at DraftKings, and Yordan Alvarez is available at 11/1. I think both of those are better bets than Judge at his current numbers. I don’t worry too much about who’s leading these markets after seven or 10 games. If you are thinking about betting Teoscar Hernandez now, you are bad at MLB futures betting.
