With Bradley Beal traded for Chris Paul this weekend, a commonly cited metric these last two days has been the shift in the Suns’ title odds. Take this, from Bleacher Report:
“It turns out adding a three-time All-Star who averaged more than 30 points per game in back-to-back seasons in 2019-20 and 2020-21 helps a team’s championship odds.
…
According to FanDuel Sportsbook, the Suns’ championship odds went from +800 (bet $100 to win $800) to +650 with the reported move.”
It’s not a bad way to measure the impact of a trade like this one, considering all options. Futures odds, by my impression, are set by books in such a way as to get some but not all bettors to bet on each team, with one important caveat: If the book has too large a liability on a given team, they can make that team’s odds artificially short. (What do I mean? If FanDuel had received an unexpected amount of action on the Suns at +800, and if FanDuel believed bettors would still bet the Suns at +650 after the trade but was worried about losing money, FanDuel could instead shift the Suns’ odds to +400, trying to scare off all but the truest Suns believers, who’d this way at least be paying an exorbitant price and thereby evening out FanDuel’s average Suns leverage. I believe this is part of how the Cubs’ title odds in mid-2016 got shorter than +300 at points.) Futures odds aren’t a precise reflection of title probability, but they’re among the best objective options available, effectively saying in most cases that the probability is somewhere around the implied number (in the Suns/FanDuel case, somewhere around 13% at +650 or 11% at +800), with some believing it higher than that number and others believing it lower.
There are, though, some significant issues with measuring offseason moves this way, and this goes for any sport—not just the NBA.
First, there’s the caveat above. By nature, especially in a case like this one where the Suns and Wizards made a move at a time when other teams aren’t making moves, sportsbooks will face something of a liability on the team whose title odds are improving immediately after that team makes the move in question. FanDuel now has bet slips out on the Suns at 8-to-1 that it can’t take back. It has an incentive to make the Suns more expensive now than they otherwise would be. This, in worlds where futures odds are the metric for measuring the value of these moves, overstates their significance.
Second, futures markets aren’t all that efficient. In a single game where 50% of money is placed on one side of a spread and 50% is placed on the other, with the odds the standard –110, sportsbooks pocket between 4% and 5% of what was bet. In a futures market, the book pockets a lot more. Using those current NBA title odds on FanDuel: If money were to come in proportionally to odds (as it should, especially at this early stage in the market), FanDuel would keep between 21% and 22% of what was bet. Add in that 1) books have plenty of time over the course of a market to pull different levers and balance their scenarios and 2) books receive value from having the cash on hand for the twelve or ten or three months over which a futures bet awaits its conclusion, and it’s a much less precise environment than the spread of a heavily-bet individual game in the NBA Finals.
Third, a lot of offseason moves are expected, which makes them baked in to title odds. Take the upcoming Super Bowl and the Green Bay Packers: When BetMGM first opened the market, the Packers were listed at 25-to-1. By February 24th, two days after Aaron Rodgers finished his darkness retreat, they’d risen to 30-to-1. By March 23rd, eight days after Rodgers said he wanted to go to the Jets, they’d risen to 35-to-1. Today, nearly two months after Rodgers was actually traded to the Jets, they’re up to 66-to-1. The thing that made them move was the Aaron Rodgers trade, but the thing driving their motion was the expectation of any Aaron Rodgers trade. Shifts in futures odds are not, then, a measure of the moves themselves, but of how unexpected those moves were.
Fourth, offseason moves are not made with only the upcoming season in mind, and they don’t only impact the upcoming season. Measuring changes in futures odds might be an effective way to measure teams’ performances across the NBA and NHL free agency blitzes, but they’re not a good way to measure a team’s performance in a draft, or even in a trade on the selling side. Nobody’s looking at the Wizards’ title odds to measure whether the Beal trade was a good one. Nobody’s looking at the Packers’ title odds to measure whether the Rodgers trade was a good one. Perhaps a sportsbook out there has Super Bowl odds for the 2027 season, but if it does, I’m unaware, and if it does, that market is likely even more inefficient, with the time value of money playing an even larger role than its already significant role in futures betting.
So yes, the Beal trade helps the Suns’ chances of winning a title, whether we want to get clickbaity about it or not. But it’s not as simple as a rise from 11% to 13%. Check with futures markets, sure, they’re one of the better options available. But you’re probably better off listening to experts.
So…Was It a Good Trade?
Going back to Core Score from last week, the Suns exchanged the player The Ringer ranks 48th-best in the league right now for the one ranked 42nd-best, with Landry Shamet unranked. This improves the Suns’ score, but only marginally. Here were the top five before the trade (you start reaching the championship viability threshold around 21):
1. Nuggets: 33.8
2. Celtics: 26.7
3. Warriors: 24.6
4. Suns: 23.9
5. Bucks: 22.1
Here are the top five now:
1. Nuggets: 33.8
2. Celtics: 26.7
3. Suns: 24.8
4. Warriors: 24.6
5. Bucks: 22.1
The Suns have, on paper, passed the Warriors, then, using our crude (but surprisingly useful) methodology. But they were within a win of the Warriors before, and they aren’t ahead of them by much, and they’re in a very temporary spot, with Deandre Ayton on the roster and no point guard and at least the second of those things set to change.
Honestly, the Clippers might be the big short-term winner out of all of this, should they indeed end up acquiring Chris Paul from Washington. The Clippers are currently eighth in the NBA in Core Score, sitting at 19.7. Add Paul and even if you remove Russell Westbrook in exchange, they jump to 21.8, sixth in the league and right around the level where a championship is believable if not likely.
This Clippers thing passes the smell test, too: When Kawhi Leonard is active, he’s one of the best players in the game. Paul George isn’t a bad accessory. Norm Powell and Ivica Zubac are significant, solid pieces of a starting five. Upgrade from Westbrook to Chris Paul and it’s not inconceivable that this team could hang with the Suns and Warriors, competing to be second-best in the West. Yes, Bradley Beal is better than Chris Paul. But Paul isn’t Westbrook, and Beal isn’t Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
He Said, the Mountain West Said
The update on the San Diego State situation is:
- The Mountain West does view San Diego State as having formally notified it of its intent to leave, despite San Diego State protesting to the contrary.
- The Mountain West will not relent and give San Diego State an extra month to withdraw (as of now, SDSU needs to leave the MWC by June 30th if it’s going to leave; otherwise, it owes an extra $17M).
- The Pac-12 still hasn’t done shit.
San Diego State is the one in the pickle here, and the Mountain West is doing the perfectly reasonable thing of not giving something of $17M value away for free. But this mess stems from the mess that is the Pac-12, and the fact the conference hasn’t said or done anything in four days since the SDSU report came out further drives home the impression that the Pac-12 is a runaway train whose engineer is frantically and unsuccessfully pulling the emergency brake. If the money’s there in the media rights deal, Pac-12 leadership should bring that deal to its schools, right? This implies that the money is not currently there.
That said, the Pac-12 doesn’t lose anything if it incidentally makes SDSU pay an extra $17M. If the move happens, it’s still going to be worth it for SDSU (also, SDSU could enter a year later, but to go back to our stability incentive talk from Friday, that is unlikely if the SDSU invitation question is as close to a coin toss as it appears). So, sure, maybe the Pac-12’s playing chicken with Amazon. I just don’t know where the cliff is, and given schools likely control that more than conference leadership (Colorado could get fed up and just leave, for instance), it’s possible the Pac-12 doesn’t know either, which brings us back to the impression that the Pac-12 is a runaway train whose…etc.
We’ll see, but at least today, I think we’re getting a 20-team Big 12. Maybe the Mountain West will give San Diego State a pass when they bring Oregon State and Washington State back with them.
What Bob Huggins’s Resignation Means For…
“Let’s get (cynical)! (Cynical)!” – Olivia Newton-John
Thank God everyone is ok after Bob Huggins’s evening drive this weekend, including Bob Huggins, to the extent the guy’s ok. Getting a DUI doesn’t mean one’s an alcoholic, but it might, and it does mean one has a problem involving one’s use of alcohol, at the very least that one’s allowing their consumption of it to put others’ lives at risk. You all know that, though, and I’d guess we all hope Bob Huggins is getting some help right now. No matter your opinion on the guy, that’s the humane thing to hope.
We’re going to talk about Iowa State, though.
At the moment, Bart Torvik (our best objective offseason projector) has the Cyclones going 16–14. Our hope is 18–15, believing that to be good enough to make the tournament out of this year’s Big 12 with the nonconference schedule Iowa State is set to play. I’m not entirely sure which games Torvik is missing, but my guess is that the games are the ESPN Events Invitational, three games where the Cyclones should be most reasonably expected to go 1–2. So, there’s rounding involved and this is far from precise, but at the moment, the best guess on what Iowa State needs to do to make the NCAA Tournament is win one more game than their roster, on paper, suggests that they should.
To bring this back to West Virginia: If West Virginia isn’t as good as roster-based systems currently project them to be, that’s one or two (or potentially three) games in which Iowa State has a better chance to win. Is it enough to push the projection upwards? It might be. We don’t know yet who’s going to transfer out of Morgantown, if anyone, and we don’t know who’s going to coach West Virginia this year. This could be a legitimately impactful development on the bubble, and not necessarily even by pushing WVU out of tournament territory. It could boost schools like Iowa State and the Oklahomas and Cincinnati and BYU, programs whose tournament hopes stand a heavy chance of balancing on a knife’s edge.
It would be messed up were any of us to say, “Yeah, I’d take an extra win in exchange for one more person out there driving drunk.” But the guy already drove drunk. That part’s settled. If a win comes out of it, I’m not going to say no.
Guys Like Mike Tauchman
The story of the Cubs right now is Michael Robert Tauchman, who after one great year in 2019 sandwiched between four sparse and/or bad years went to Korea last season. He did enough that in January, his hometown team (he’s from Palatine, went to Fremd) picked him up and stashed him in Des Moines. Then, Cody Bellinger got hurt and the Cubs had a need in center field.
The thing about what Tauchman is doing is that even with a .381 BABIP, he’s potentially been unlucky at the plate. The man’s wOBA is .359. His xwOBA is .374. That implies that instead of being the 52nd-best hitter in baseball since his callup a month ago (using wRC+), he’s really been close to the top 25. He’s no Ronald Acuña Jr., but the man is hitting the ball.
Tauchman’s limited career sample helps make him an enticing pick to keep doing this. He didn’t reach 200 plate appearances in either of 2020 or 2021, and even in 2019—when he generated nearly three wins above replacement for the Yankees—he topped out at 296 PA’s. So far this year, he’s got 104, already almost the third-most opportunities he’s gotten in an MLB season. Even if you run a weighted average of 2020, 2021, and 2023 so far, you get an 83 wRC+ projection, which is bad but not entirely unsightly. More nuanced approaches like those of ZiPS and FanGraphs Depth Charts come up with a number around 95, not quite league average but better than replacement-level and not much worse than the 98 projection for Trey Mancini, the man Tauchman has indirectly displaced by pushing Bellinger to first base in his return. Mancini’s the better hitter between the two on paper, but Tauchman has that uncertainty about him which leaves his upside miles higher than that of the former Oriole. If Tauchman hits like he’s hit this month—and like he hit in 2019—over the rest of the season, he’ll end up as better than a 2-WAR player, likely putting him in the top 150 in Major League Baseball.
To win in the Major Leagues, you need a lot of productive players. Some of those should be the guys you paid for, in free agency or via trade. Some should be the guys you developed. But some should be these sneaky, dime-a-dozen pickups, the OG Moneyball finds. You need guys like Mike Tauchman.
The Cubs go for their fourth straight series win tonight, and they’ve played themselves into a position where if they win this series, win their remaining pre-All Star Break three-game series, and split their respective two-game and four-game sets in that span, they’ll enter the Home Run Derby one game under .500. That would require some good play, but it’s possible they’ve caught the Pirates at a good time, meaning they could conceivably grab two wins in the next 24 hours if we’re allowed to get a little greedy about it. In the longer term? FanGraphs has the Cubs finishing 78–84, four games back of the Brewers and tied with both the Cardinals and the Reds, with the schedule still among baseball’s easiest the rest of the way. The division is far from out of reach, and this is still a bad roster, but…guys like Mike Tauchman.
