I concede on the A’s

A question for the baseball experts: has any team in history ever been as bad as the A’s were early in the season and done as well as they are doing now? It has been an amazing run.

Interestingly, the market at tradesports is still giving the A’s no respect. The bid-ask spread on total wins this season for the A’s is centered on 88.6 wins. If the A’s win exactly half their remaining games, they will have 88 wins. In comparison, the tradesports market thinks that the Yankees will end with 89.2 wins. To accomplish that they will need to go 33-25 for the rest of the season. The Los Angeles Angels, who are currently one game ahead of the A’s, are projected to beat the A’s by 2.5 games at the end of the season. Boston, which has essentially the same record as the A’s right now, is projected to beat the A’s by 4.5 games at the end of the season.

I don’t know anything about baseball, as evidenced by my prior posts. But from what I know about real-world data in other contexts, it surprises me that the market would be so negative on the A’s at this point.

Economists, like everyone else, are much better at explaining the past then predicting the future. But, given the odds at Tradesports, I just put down a little money on the A’s to win more than 88.6 games this year.

I can be accused of many things, but doggedly sticking to false conclusions in the face of new evidence is not one of my weaknesses.

I also bet a colleague of mine who knows much more about baseball than I do that the White Sox would make the World Series. He gave me odds of 3-1. I thought that I was getting a great deal. It turns out that is almost exactly what Tradesports says the odds should be. Further proof I should stick to what I know.