The Brewers' -750 Is About Right. "Brewers in Five" at +210 Is Where the Markup Is

Milwaukee was down 4-0 before it batted on Saturday night and won 5-4. William Contreras and Garrett Mitchell got two back in the first. Pratt scored on Jonathan Aranda's error in the fourth, Sal Frelick tied it with a homer off Ian Seymour in the sixth, and Cooper Pratt singled in the go-ahead run in the seventh. The bullpen threw six scoreless innings. By Sunday morning DraftKings had the Brewers at -750 to win the series and the Rays at +500, out from +240 before the game.

A -750 favourite looks expensive and the comeback looked like destiny, so the easy take is that the price has run ahead of the baseball. We checked it three ways. It hasn't. The series price is close to fair. The overpriced number is the one at the top of the exact-result board, which is also the story everyone told after Saturday: Milwaukee in five, at +210.

What the series price says

At -750, a Brewers ticket implies 88.2 percent. The Rays at +500 imply 16.7 percent. Those add to 104.9 percent, and the 4.9 points over 100 is the book's margin. Spread that margin proportionally and the market's own view is Brewers 84.1 percent, Rays 15.9 percent.

The history agrees. MLB.com counts 96 best-of-seven postseason series in which a team led 2-0, and the leader won 80 of them, 83 percent. That is within about a point of the market. ESPN's line from Saturday night, that each of the past 13 teams to go up 2-0 in a World Series won the title, is accurate and misleading. Thirteen in a row is a streak, not a rate. SI notes that ten teams have come back from 0-2 in a World Series, most recently the 1996 Yankees.

Then there is pure arithmetic. The Rays need four wins before Milwaukee gets two. Over five games, if every game were a coin flip, that happens 6 times in 32, or 18.75 percent. So even before you give the Brewers any edge, the Rays are no better than about one in five.

What the book's own Game 3 price says

Game 3 is Monday at Tropicana Field, Freddy Peralta against Robert Gasser. DraftKings has the Rays at -120 and the Brewers at even money. Without the margin, that makes Tampa Bay about 52 percent to win Monday.

Hold that number for every Rays home game and give them 44 percent in each game back in Milwaukee, and they win the series 17.3 percent of the time. That is our assumption, not the book's: we do not have prices for Games 4 through 7. A more realistic version gives the Rays less in Games 4 and 5, because Peralta pitches only one of them and his postseason is the best thing Tampa Bay has: two runs in 16⅔ innings, a 1.08 ERA, and a 4-0 team record in his starts. Drop the Rays to 48 percent in those two home games and the series number falls to 15.4 percent. The market's 15.9 sits between the two.

So the series price passes all three checks. The margin is the ordinary 4.9 points, and neither side is especially generous.

Where the markup is

The exact-result prices do not pass. SI lists Brewers in five at +210, the favourite on the correct-score board, which implies 32.3 percent.

For Milwaukee to finish it in exactly five, it has to win one of Games 3 and 4, lose the other, and then win Game 5. With the same numbers as above (52 percent for Tampa Bay on Monday, 48 percent in Games 4 and 5), that comes to 26.1 percent. With the Rays at 52 percent in all three home games, it is 23.9 percent. To make +210 fair you would need the Rays to be clear underdogs in Games 4 and 5 at home, and the book's own Game 3 price says they are not.

At a true 26 percent, a $100 bet at +210 is worth about $81 before it is placed, an expected loss of roughly 19 percent. The series bet at -750 costs a little under 5 percent of the stake against the same probabilities. The exact-result market costs four times as much to play, and its headline price is the one that matches the story everyone is telling after Saturday.

The Rays' side of the board is not a bargain either. Rays in six at +1200 implies 7.7 percent, against 5.3 to 6.3 percent from the same two sets of numbers, a similar markup. Rays in seven at +750 implies 11.8 percent, against 10.1 to 11.1 percent, and that is the closest thing to a fair price on the exact-result menu. The markup is spread across the whole board. It is just largest in absolute terms on the outcome at the top.

The case for +210

The best argument against us is that the book knows things we don't. It knows the Game 4 and Game 5 starters and has a model with platoon and bullpen detail, and the Brewers do have the best record in baseball. If Tampa Bay's rotation after Peralta is as thin as their 3⅔-inning Rasmussen start suggests, the Brewers could be real favourites in Games 4 and 5. Then "in five" climbs toward 30 percent.

That is possible, and it is the reason we present a range and not a single number. It still runs into the Game 3 line. A market that makes Tampa Bay a home favourite with its ace on the mound is not, a day later, likely to make Milwaukee a big favourite in the same building. And correct-score menus carry wide margins as a rule. That is the main reason books offer them.

What would change our view is a Game 4 line. If DraftKings opens Milwaukee at -150 or shorter for Tuesday, the book is pricing a much weaker Tampa Bay back end than the series number implies, and +210 starts to look fair. If Game 4 opens near a coin flip, the series price is the honest number on the board and Brewers in five is mostly paying for the story.

Game 1 was decided by an overturned double play, and Game 2 by 45 foul balls and a four-run first inning the Brewers came back from. Both were one-run games. A series of one-run games is the one the exact-result board handles worst.

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