Baseball's Turnaround Teams For 2011
Our annual Baseball's Turnaround Teams is back for 2011 and we've had decent success in the past guessing which teams will be due for a few more wins or losses than in 2010.Our method is almost embarrassingly simple. We simply look at one-run games the previous year and look to see which teams won an extraordinary amount, or came up on the losing side more than they should have and expect a bit of a reversal.
No matter how good a team's closer is, one-run games involve a bit of luck and it seldom carries over from year to year.
There were only two teams that meet our standard criteria this year:
Detroit Tigers: The Tigers were a dismal 16-26 in one-run games last year, but still managed to win 81 games. This year, we'll look for a bit of an improvement and also take the Tigers to win over 84.5 games at +105 odds.
Philadelphia Phillies The Phillies were 29-17 in one-run games last year on their way to winning 97 games. While they may approach the same number of wins this year, their pitching staff will have them prohibitive favorites in most games and they may be hard=pressed to show a flat-bet profit on the season.
Washington and Seattle came close to be teams which should improve, but just missed. They may be worth an extra look however, as they were 20-28 and 21-28 in one-run games respectively, but also posted poor records in extra-inning games, with Seattle going 3-11 and Washington going 3-10.
