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As Major League Baseball experiences a growing economic divide, and perhaps an enlarging competitive one as well, sportsbooks and analytics experts are taking close notice.
The league begins its 2025 regular season in full with two historic situations among sports bettors: The defending champion Dodgers are the league’s heaviest Opening Day betting favorite since the 2002 Yankees, according to ESPN, while the White Sox’ projected win total of 53.5 for over-under bets is the lowest such MLB prediction in nearly four decades.
Some of this sentiment directly follows last year’s actual outcomes in which the Dodgers won their first full-season championship since 1988, while the White Sox lost 121 games, setting a modern-era MLB record and tying an American League record with 21 straight losses at one point. The betting lines, however, reflect a belief that those trends will grow, with the league’s mightiest teams becoming stronger and the weakest ones falling further behind the leaders.
Los Angeles is mounting its title defense after a highly active offseason that included acquisitions of starting pitchers Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki, relievers Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates, and the retention of outfielder Teoscar Hernández, among other moves. The club’s luxury-tax payroll of $398.2 million for 2025 is a new league record. The White Sox, conversely, traded away arguably their most talented player, pitcher Garrett Crochet, to the Red Sox.
The Dodgers have an implied probability of more than 25% to win the World Series on both FanDuel and DraftKings, by far the two market leaders in U.S. sports betting.
The baseball analytics community concurs strongly with the gambling industry sentiment. Baseball Prospectus projections have the Dodgers at 104.2 wins for the season, more than 10 wins greater than any other MLB club, and holding a 99.8% chance of reaching the playoffs. The White Sox have a projection of 62.5 wins for 2024, actually beating out the Marlins’ 60 and the Rockies’ 55.8, but all three teams are deemed to have literally no shot of playing in the postseason.
FanGraphs, similarly, predicts the Dodgers will win 97.4 games and have a 97.9% chance of the postseason, with the White Sox pegged for 62.9 wins. The site also projects that Chicago, along with Colorado, has a 0% shot of the postseason.
Despite the enlarging gaps, MLB has not had a repeat World Series winner since 2000, a streak of competitive balance unrivaled among any major men’s pro sports league in North America. The heavy favoritism for the Dodgers, however, suggests the quarter-century streak could be coming to an end.
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