MLB Baseball Betting

With September upon us and just over a month left in the regular season, it’s time to take a look at team’s magic numbers, chances of making the playoffs and odds to win the pennants and World Series.  Only eight teams will make the postseason, but Vegas is still offering futures odds on six teams from the American League and seven from the National League. Let’s take a closer look:

AL EAST

New York Yankees (83-50)

• Magic Number to win the division: 29
• Magic Number to make the playoffs: 22
• BP odds of winning division: 56%
• BP odds of winning wild card: 41%
• Vegas odds of winning AL pennant: 3/2
• Vegas odds of winning World Series: 5/2

Tampa Bay Devil Rays (82-51)

• Magic Number to make the playoffs: 23
• BP odds of winning division: 43%

It’s September and Major League Baseball’s playoffs are almost upon us.  The entire first round will again be broadcast on TBS, and the geniuses at Turner Sports know just how to get the most people possible interested in watching every last second of thrilling Division Series excitement. Bombard the airwaves and movie theaters with a whole lot of Kid Rock! Well, at least it’s not Dane Cook.

TBS has chosen Kid Rock’s Born Free, the title track off his new LP record, as its marketing theme song for the playoffs.  They’ve got a two and a half minute video that mixes Detroit area concert footage with baseball highlights that will debut Friday at 14,600 movie theaters.  If you’re terrible curious what the song sounds like in non-commercial form, here’s YouTube concert video:

Some Turner exec called the song “the perfect track” for baseball commercials:

Major League Baseball won’t let you see any of its content on YouTube in America, but they’ve just announced a new deal with YouTube to show full games and other video in Japan. A joint press release says its the biggest premium sports partnership in the history of YouTube. YouTube viewers in Australia, Brazil, New Zealand and Russia also get access to highlight clips and archives in the deal.

The big part of the Japan YouTube deal is offering free on demand full game video from the past two seasons, some classic games, and highlight packages of Japanese-born MLB players. Games from this season become available within 36 hours of being played.  In addition to historic performances from Japanese players, MLB also thinks Japanese YouTube viewers would be into watching Hank Aaron break Babe Ruth’s record and Randy Johnson throw a perfect game in 2004.

The Tampa Bay Rays continued to roll on Monday with a win over the Toronto Blue Jays. The win for the Rays kept pace with the Yankees at the top of the American League East; both at 81-50. Both Tampa Bay and New York lead Boston by 7 games for the final postseason spot.

The Rays scored two runs in the first inning when Carl Crawford and Carlos Pena knocked in Upton and Crawford. Toronto bounced back and cut the lead in half in the third inning. In the third, Pena hit a three run homerun; his 26th of the season to break the game to a four run lead. Aaron Hill’s homerun in the 5th was the final run of the game for the Blue Jays. Evan Longoria picked up the final RBI for Tampa Bay in the 8th.