Playing MLB win totals – tying up your money with a book for several months at a relatively small edge in expected value – is naturally unappealing to many bettors.
By placing these wagers, you’re diminishing your accessible bankroll in the short term and providing the house with an interest-free loan for at least half a year.
From a personal perspective, however, win total over/unders are my favorite preseason markets to try to beat in any league and also serve as a guide for teams that may be underrated in the divisional and World Series futures markets.
But there are a few things you should always keep in mind when surveying the odds in these markets:
- Books over-inflate their total win markets, which means that the total number of wins among the 30 teams adds up to more wins than are available during an MLB season (2,430).
- Similarly, books over-inflate their divisional odds markets, meaning the combined probability, as indicated by the implied odds, of all teams in a division winning that division will exceed 100%.
- Finally, books also over-inflate their pennant and World Series markets, meaning the combined probability, as indicated by the implied odds, of all 30 MLB to potentially win the World Series will exceed 100%.
Moreover, we have a new set of rules, potential injuries in the upcoming World Baseball Classic — and potential roster moves to navigate during spring training.
As a result, I will update this post before opening day with any additional bets or significant projection alterations.
Before I update this article, I will post any new bets to the Action Network App: action.onelink.me/qhpb/zerillo
Below are my 2023 win total projections, alongside projections from Clay Davenport, FanGraphs’ ZIPS, and Baseball Prospectus’s PECOTA.
First, I want to define two terms you might see below: refers to the average of the three projections. In contrast, refers to an average of the “Market” projection and my projection.
For the next section only, however – regarding prediction accuracy – note that I used the market projection AS the composite projection in both 2018 and 2019.
Prediction Accuracy
Before we jump into the division-by-division breakdowns, I thought you might be interested in seeing how these projections have performed against win totals over a multi-year sample.
I analyzed all four projection systems – and their final preseason projected win total – compared to the market total for each team and the actual wins for those teams.