NEWSLETTER
One really fun perk as a fan of a great team – other than, you know, winning – is getting the opportunity to see many of our favorite players win major awards or lead certain statistical categories.
And, if you have the stomach for it (or, more importantly, the money), you can even bet on those players to win. (I don’t, but hey, to each their own.)
One such service, Bovada, for example, has just released their preseason odds for a variety of categories and awards, and several Cubs feature prominently among the lists.
Among the categories listed, the Cubs have placed two players with good odds to win the NL MVP, three to win the NL Cy Young Award and three more to hit the most home runs in baseball in 2016.
[adinserter block=”1″]Without looking, can you guess each player and the relative order of their odds? (For each category, I’ll list just the top three players, as well as the Chicago Cubs on the list with their odds in parentheses.)
Odds to Win National League MVP
Odds to Win National League Cy Young Award
2016 Most Regular Season Home Runs
I actually feel as though those odds are pretty spot on – that is the point, though – with the exception of Kyle Schwarber. I doubt he actually leads the league in home runs next season, but I’d probably give him better than 50/1 odds (then again, if he doesn’t get more than 500-550 plate appearances he might not be able).
[adinserter block=”2″]It’s also interesting to see just how highly the odds-making community seems to value Kris Bryant – 9/1 odds to win the NL MVP when you’re playing around guys like Harper, Stanton, McCutchen, Goldschmidt and Joey Votto is a extraordinarily high praise, but hopefully well deserved.
As for Lackey winning a Cy Young, eh, I wouldn’t (hypothetically) bet on it, but Arrieta seems interested in repeating 2015 and Jon Lester is off to a healthy, good start this Spring (according to Joe Maddon). All in all, this is just a fun, different way to look at how well the Cubs players stack up around the league.
With any luck, maybe they’ll even take home some of these awards.
