WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

What the latest odds reveal about Houston Astros World Series aspirations

Astros Jose Altuve
The Astros could be a value. Composite Getty Image.
Houston exhales: Astros make easiest offseason move yet

If you watch the small print of scores and news at the bottom of the screen during ESPN SportsCenter or their talk shows with Kendrick Perkins and Dan Orlovsky appearing on 15 different programs the same day, you may have noticed an important change this week.

For the first time all baseball season, the Houston Astros are not the betting favorite to win the 2023 World Series.

Of course there are reasons for downgrading the Astros stock – their inability to catch and release the Texas Rangers, plus injuries to key players like Jose Altuve, Yordan Alvarez, Michael Brantley and Lance McCullers Jr.

Still, seeing the Astros fall behind the Atlanta Braves as top betting choice to win the Fall Classic brought it home that the Astros’ slip may be showing.

The same day the Astros dropped as betting favorite, the ESPN news notes said, “Astros pitcher Lance McCullers Jr. has surgery, out for the season, hasn’t pitched in 2023,” and “Astros slugger Yordan Alvarez out for four weeks with oblique strain.”

As of today, the Braves are the favorite, +450 to win it all, meaning you’ll win $450 if you plunk down $100 on Atlanta. The Dodgers are +500 and the Rays sit at +550, while the Astros are +700. The Rays are baseball’s biggest surprise so far – they were +2,200 on Opening Day. They’re currently in first place in the American League East with a MLB best 50-22 record.

Curiously, and we have no problem with this, bettors have little confidence in the AL West-leading Rangers, sitting 3.5 games ahead of the Astros. Despite their early success, the Rangers currently are +1,400 longshots to win the World Series.

My soul won’t allow me to bet on, and therefore root for the Rangers, but as those tout sheet wiseguys would say, there’s value there. Or as Cosmo Kramer would put it, “that’s some sweet action.”

While injuries continue to plague the Astros, bettors still hold them in decent regard at +700.

Are the Astros a good gamble? The odds are against them repeating as champions. But there’s one guy who’s keeping the faith. Jim McIngvale is putting his money and Sealy Posturepedics on the Astros again.

Let’s turn back the clock one year. You could say that Mattress Mack had some pretty good fortune backing the locals in 2022.

In May, Mack bet $3 million on the Astros at +1,000. He made the bet on the Caesars Sportsbook app while sitting in a Subway parking lot just over the border into Louisiana. It’s stupefyingly stupid that Texans have to do that if they want to bet on sports legally. In July, when the odds on the Astros fell to +500, Mack doubled down with a $2 million wager on BetMGM, $2 million at Barstool Sportsbook (“one bite, everybody knows the rules.” and $1 million each at Wynn, Unibet and Betfred.

The Astros won it all and Mack backed up his truck to collect $75 million – a historic one-day haul in sports gambling.

The Astros have been a good bet since their wild rollercoaster ride began in 2017. They opened that season as +1,500 longshots, behind the Giants (+1,400), Nationals (+1,000), Dodgers (+900), Red Sox (+900), Indians (+450), and this surprised me, the betting favorite Cubs (+400).

Bottom line, and really that’s all that counts, if you had bet $1,000 on the Astros at the beginning of each season 2017-22, you would have won $26,000 minus your initial investment and losing wagers in 2018-19-20-21, for about a $20,000 windfall. And for one person, minus refunds on all those mattresses.

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The Astros' offense needs a reset. Photo by Logan Riely/Getty Images.

Major League Baseball’s regular season is 162 games long. You can think of 18 games as the first inning of the season, 18 times nine equaling 162. While the Astros 8-10 record is not good, it’s far from disastrous. Think of it as them being behind 1-0 after the first inning. It is pretty remarkable that they have yet to win consecutive games. Even during last year’s 7-19 stink bomb of a start the Astros twice managed to win two in a row.

The Astros’ offensive woes are plentiful. Oddly enough as impotent as they’ve been, the Astros have yet to be shutout. But in half their games they have scored exactly one or two runs. Basically, most of them stink thus far. Exemptions go to Jose Altuve and Isaac Paredes, but it’s not like either of them has been outstanding. It’s still early enough that one big series can dramatically alter the numbers, but the Astros badly need Yordan Alvarez to pick up his production. Yordan enters the weekend batting just .224 with a .695 OPS and just four extra base hits. Yainer rhymes with minor. As in minor leagues, where Diaz belongs at his current level of performance. That is not saying Diaz should be sent down, just that any random AAA catcher called up couldn’t have done much worse to this point. Diaz isn’t hitting Altuve’s weight, a woeful .130 with seven hits in 57 at bats. Diaz simply remains too undisciplined at the plate swinging at too many balls. He’s drawn three walks. And now to Christian Walker, who thus far has delivered return on investment for his three year 60 million dollar contract about as strong as the stock market’s performance in Tariff Time. Walker’s .154 batting average and .482 OPS are very Astro Jose Abreu-like. Walker’s23 strikeouts in 65 at bats jump off the page. He has often looked befuddled in the batter's box. Walker is definitely pressing and frustrated, wanting to perform better for his new team. Jeremy Pena goes into the weekend batting .215 and has one hit in 13 at bats with runners in scoring position. Brendan Rodgers, Jake Meyers, and Chas McCormick all have weak stat lines, with little reason to expect quality offensive output from any of them. Cam Smith is at .200 with a yucky .591 OPS but he’s obviously a young stud work in progress thrown into the deep end of the pool.

All batting orders are top-heavy, the Astros’ on paper more so than many. As I set forth on one of our Stone Cold ‘Stros podcasts this week, the first inning should be a team’s best offensive inning. It’s the only frame in which a team gets to dictate who comes up from the start with the batters lined up just as the manager slots them. Add to that, the first inning is a good time to get to a starting pitcher before he settles in. The Astros have scored a pitiful three first inning runs in 18 games, and in two of the games they pushed one across in the first, it turned out to be the only Astro run of the game. Improvement needs to come internally from the big league roster. It’s not as if the Astros have a meaningful prospect at AAA Sugar Land who looks ready to help. Entering play Thursday the Space Cowboys’ team average was .186. Second base hopeful Brice Matthews is nowhere close, batting .180 and striking out left and right. Outfielder Jacob Melton opened three for 17 following the back injury-delayed start to his season.

As exasperating and boring as the offense has been for so many, grading needs to occur on a curve. So, while the Astros’ team batting average is a joke at .216, know that at close of business Wednesday the entire American League was batting just .232. The American League West-leading Texas Rangers scored eight fewer runs over their first 18 games than did the Astros, though that is skewed by the Astros’ one 14-run outburst against the Angels.

Familiar faces return

This weekend the Astros play host to the San Diego Padres at Daikin Park. The Friars are off to a fabulous start at 15-4. The Padres being here creates a mini reunion as both Martin Maldonado and Yuli Gurriel are on their roster. In a telling fact, Maldonado would have the third-highest batting average on the Astros if on the team with his current numbers. Maldonado is hitting .250 with seven hits in 28 at bats. The last season he finished above .200 was 2020. The only season in his career Maldonado topped .234 was his rookie season with a .266 mark in 2012.

Gurriel was last good in 2021 when he won the American League batting title at .319. He fell off a cliff from there, though perked up to have a fine postseason in the Astros’ 2022 run to World Series title number two. “La Pina” is batting .115 with just three hits in 26 at bats. Gurriel may be released soon, and approaching his 41st birthday June 9, that would probably be the end of the line. Short-timer Astro Jason Heyward is also on the Padres, and batting .190.

For Astro-centric conversation, join Brandon Strange, Josh Jordan, and me for the Stone Cold ‘Stros podcast which drops each Monday afternoon, with an additional episode now on Thursday. Click here to catch!

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