Before the World Series began, the Chicago Cubs were seen as clear favorites over the Cleveland Indians.
Despite an American League-won home field advantage for the Indians, the Cubs’ perceived rotational and offensive superiority was enough for most models to provide comfortable cover for the Northsiders.
FanGraphs gave the Cubs a 64.5% chance of winning, FiveThirtyEight gave the Cubs a 63% shot, and the ESPN (ZiPS) projection odds sat comfortably at a familiar 64% … and then the Cubs dropped Game 1 of the World Series to Corey Kluber and The Andrew Millers (my new name for the Cleveland Indians).
The odds, expectedly, dropped.
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After the Game 1 loss, the Cubs odds dropped down to 45.9% at FanGraphs, 48% at FiveThirtyEight, and 50.4% according to ZiPS. HOWEVA … is that really all that bad, when you’re down 0-1 in a seven-game series? For it still to be a coin flip?
Then the Cubs won Game Two of the World Series in Cleveland, splitting the road trip and the series 1-1.
Now, it’s a best of five series, with home field advantage shifting back towards the Chicago Cubs. As you can imagine, that swings things significantly back into the Cubs’ favor.
The Cubs are the favorite in this one. A very comfortable favorite:
Using Brett’s own words, we all know that projections and probabilities and odds are only that, but there seems to be – once again – a roughly two in three shot that the the Cubs will win the 2016 World Series.
Or, to put it differently, the Cubs are nearly twice as likely to win the series as the Indians. Essentially, we’re right back where we started.
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But hey, where we started was the Cubs on top by a hefty margin. So that should work just fine for you! Game Three at Wrigley Field starts tonight at 7pm CT with Kyle Hendricks – the 2016 ERA leader – on the mound, facing Josh Tomlin.
Let’s go Cubs.