Figure the odds: Astros World Series favorite, Alvarez best odds for MVP

The Astros enter the 2021 World Series with the better odds of winning it all.

The Houston Astros opened as a -145 (59.2%) favorite at WynnBET.com to win the World Series and are -130 (56.5%) for Tuesday’s opening game.

There’s good reason for the slightly lower odds for the Astros on Tuesday, as they face Charlie Morton, who was on the mound when the Astros got the final out to win the 2017 World Series, an experienced veteran with 15 playoff starts and 75.2 playoff innings under his belt.

Framber Valdez has less experience and better playoff numbers, but he’s never pitched in the World Series and four of his seven postseason appearances came in 2020 with no fans in the stands.

For what it’s worth, FanGraphs gives the Astros a slight nod in the series, 51.7% to 48.3% and on Tuesday, 52.6% to 47.4%.

At WynnBET.com the odds of the series ending in for games is +650, five games is +250 and six or seven games is +185 each.  This means they’re expecting a six or seven-game series, which seems perfectly reasonable.

Yordan Alvarez has the best odds at World Series MVP at +800, followed by Freddie Freeman at +900, while Jose Altuve, Michael Brantley, Alex Bregman and Eddie Rosario are all +1000.

I’m certainly not a professional bettor, but on its surface setting the odds for Altuve, Brantley and Bregman all at +1000 seems curious and for my money Altuve is a better bet (meaning he should have lower odds) over the others.

The same goes for a couple of Astros even further down the pecking order: Carlos Correa (+1100) and Kyle Tucker (+1200).

Correa plays one of the most visible positions on the field, is a wizard with the glove, has a cannon for an arm and can hit the ball a mile with flair.  There will be ample opportunity for Correa to shine and I think he’s undervalued here.

Tucker is a longer shot as right field doesn’t provide a lot of opportunities to shine defensively, meaning he likely would have to completely tear it up offensively and dominate, as Yordan did in the ALCS, and that means his odds should be greater.  All that said, I still think Tucker’s odds should be better than Brantley or Bregman, because of the season he’s had and the opportunity for multiple long balls.