If you ask any fan of the Dodgers which MLB team looks the best on paper, you’d probably get a unanimous answer. Apparently, the oddsmakers in Las Vegas also feel the same way.
With six games to go in the regular season and trailing by two full games in the National League West, the Dodgers are still comfortable favorites to win the 2021 World Series. In Vegas, anyway.
What does +300 mean?
The +300 represents the odds of a bet. In this situation, for every $100 that you bet on the Dodgers to win the Series, you’d pocket $300 in return should Los Angeles repeat as World Champions.
Toss down a cool $1000 on them, and you’d pull in $3,000 if they win.
However, as we all know, the game of baseball is not played on paper or on computers, much to the chagrin of several of our resident saber-metricians. And Vegas odds mean nothing, aside from the bettor that already dropped a cool hundred or two on their favorite club.
Just ask the San Francisco Giants. Currently sitting at 102-54, the longtime foes of the Dodgers can conceivably make a run at the franchise’s record of 106 wins, which was set back in 1904 by the New York baseball Giants. This year is the eighth time in franchise history the Giants hit the century mark in wins.
Coincidentally, the Dodgers have hit 100 wins nine times, including their 2021 campaign.
Should the Dodgers bow out of the 2021 playoffs early, the storyline will sound something like “the underachieving team that could have been.” If Los Angeles goes deep into this year’s postseason, we’ll be reading headlines like “the team that finally put it all together.”
Right now, the theme of the year for the Dodgers surrounds whichever offense decides to show up on a given night. The club’s +247 run differential is far and away the best in the majors. It’s 50 runs better than the Giants and leads the Astros by 42 runs, who have the second-best mark in the bigs.
We’ve talked a lot lately about how many lopsided games the Dodgers have played this year, which is indicative of such a catastrophic number. One night they’ll defeat a club by double digits, only to go dormant with the lumber the very next night. Yet, despite all the ups and downs, coupled with a year riddled by injuries, they’re still in the divisional hunt with another 100-win season.
They’ve used a whopping 61 players on the active roster this season, far and away a franchise record.
Heading into Tuesday’s games, the Dodgers lead the National League with 783 runs scored and are first in the NL with an overall 2.97 team ERA.
All that looks great on paper, but anything can happen, especially if they’re in a do-or-die Wildcard game. For the sake of winning, Los Angeles fans hope the projected numbers and stats hold true through the first week of November.
