MLB Betting Odds: Should the Boston Red Sox Throw in the Towel?

Posted by Alex Murphy on Tuesday,June 30, 2015 5:36, EDT in

Placed dead-last in the division and 7 games behind the AL East-leading duo of Orioles and Rays, 11.5 games behind the AL-leading Kansas City Royals, and 17.5 games behind the MLB-leading St. Louis Cardinals, the Boston Red Sox (35-43, .449) are certainly not having the kind of good season they’d talked about and dreamed of at the start of the 2015 season, let’s check their MLB betting odds.

Coming off two wins in their last 2 games, you’d be mistaken to think that the Red Sox are on a rise in the MLB odds. In fact, you’d probably even want to believe that the Red Sox could turn around their run. But that is until you hear what this Red Sox team has been week in, week out.

MLB Betting Odds: Should the Boston Red Sox Throw in the Towel?

 

 

Over the course of this season, the Red Sox have had their flashes of brilliance, the kind that they are showing now after winning 6 of their last 10 games, including 3 of their last 5 games that culminated in the 3-1 win over the Blue Jays on Monday Night. However, after such positive stints, the Red Sox have often gone back to their confines of poor batting and pathetic pitching, making them the highly criticized team they’ve been this season.

Probably only person that has been a consistent performer for this team over the recent times is Clay Buchholz, but even he had to come off a shaky start to the season typical to his rollercoaster career. Matter of fact, Buchholz was the starter yesterday, throwing eight strong innings and allowing one run on five hits while striking out five without a walk in the 3-1 victory against the Toronto Blue Jays.

In his last nine starts for the Boston Red Sox, Buchholz has a 2.13 earned run average. His ERA for the season, which was disappointingly 6.03 on May 4, has now dropped to 3.48. In addition, the 30-year-old right hander has gone seven starts without allowing a home run. Sadly for Boston fans, Bucholz is one of the key players being targeted for trade and if the Red Sox are still last in the division three weeks from now, his rumored transfer could take effect. After all, the Red Sox have set a precedence before of trading away their good players before, so it would not be a surprise for that to happen again.

Meanwhile, history doesn’t hold much hope for the Red Sox and their piped dreams of reaching the playoffs. If the Sox can beat the Blue Jays tonight (Tuesday Night), the best record they’ll have as of July 1st (tomorrow) is 36-43, which will be seven games under .500 mark. And according to the Elias Sports Bureau, only the following 4 teams have been 7 games under .500 or worse on July 1 and qualified for the postseason:

• 1914 Miracle Boston Braves (26-35, 9 under)
• 1974 Pittsburgh Pirates (32-40, 8 under)
• 1973 New York Mets (32-39, 7 under)
• 1984 Kansas City Royals (33-40, 7 under)

Analysis and calculations done by Baseball Prospectus also don’t look that promising for Boston fans, placing them at 7 percent to reach the playoffs, 2 percent chance to win the AL East division, 5 percent chance to qualify as a wild card team, and 0.7 percent chance of the 2015 World Series.

For any other team, such MLB odds would give them a lifeline. But for the Boston team that is playing badly at home as well as on the road (going just 17-20 at home and 18-23 on the road this season), we don’t see much to hope for. So although you should watch out for Boston to win a couple of games down the stretch, especially when decent pitchers likes of Buchholz and Justin Masterson take to the mound, we would advise you to keep away from anything related to Boston and its MLB playoff odds, if you haven’t done so already.

Sources:
Baseball-reference.com: http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/BSN/1948.shtml
ESPN.com: http://espn.go.com/mlb/team/_/name/bos/boston-red-sox