Did you get taken to the cleaners? Or is it cigars all round?
Back at the start of the season, as is SnakePit tradition, I handed out 1,500 SnakePit Dollars to anyone who wanted to place some bets on various prop bets on the D-backs team, manager and players. This year, twenty of you entered the casino. Well, 21, but Michael ignored the bit about a $300 maximum bet, and so was taken into the Sonoran Desert and ruthlessly beaten with a wet copy of the Phoenix New Times. [I should have let him bet, in hindsight!] Everyone else now gets to learn how their wagers fared, after I spent a bored Saturday afternoon spreadsheeting.
Before we get to the results though, let’s go through the categories of bets and see how they ended up. This is always interesting, as a yardstick of how various players, as well as the team overall, did in comparison to pre-season expectations. For each bet, you’ll see the preseason, the amount wagered by bettors on the over and under, the final number, and whether it was the over or under which prevailed.
- Diamondbacks Wins: 85.5 (4415-370), 89 OVER
I think just about every year I’ve done this, fans have leaned towards the over, and that’s very strongly the case here again, even after I increased the win total from the original Vegas line. In hindsight, I should have done so by even more. No single bet was more popular than expecting the D-backs to do well, and in the end, that’s exactly what they did. They picked up their 86th win with eight games left to go, although they limped down the stretch, and ended up missing out on a post-season spot. Still, for betting purposes the house took a huge bath on this one, losing over four grand in SnakePit Dollars.
- Lovullo ejections: 2.5 (1180-600), 3 OVER
This was a fun one. Lovullo was tossed on three occasions. First on May 15, he left the game following the ejection of Joc Pederson (the link is a really good breakdown of that whole incident). Then on June 15 (above), he was given his marching orders – again, oddly, after Pederson took issue with the strike zone of the home-plate umpire. That was in a loss against the White Sox, so you can kinda understand his annoyance there! The final one was at least different. It was the game where Bobby Witt got plunked, when a single short of the cycle, and Gabriel Moreno then got hit. That led to warnings, and Lovullo got tossed for arguing about it, then got into it with Salvador Perez. Again, here’s a nice breakdown.
- MLB Debuts: 6.5 (665-1015), 6 UNDER
I liked doing this one as well, and I’m pleased to report I just about got it right. The final count was down from nine last year, and actually marked the lowest tally for Arizona since 2018, when there were only three debuts. We began on Opening Day with Blaze Alexander, followed shortly thereafter by Jorge Barrosa. Blake Walston showed up on May 1st, and the over looked well within reach. However, there was nothing more until early July, when Cristian Mena and Yilver Diaz arrived. On August 7th, Adrian Del Castillo got us right to the edge of the line. But nobody else arrived, even once roster expanded in September, and we were left under by the narrowest of margins.
- Corbin Carroll BA .280 (1430-0), .231 UNDER
- Corbin Carroll HR 23.5 (300-580), 22 UNDER
- Corbin Carroll RBI 79.5 (430-0), 74 UNDER
- Corbin Carroll Runs 106.5 (1665-65), 121 OVER
- Corbin Carroll Hits 161.5 (65-165) 136 UNDER
- Corbin Carroll SB 45.5 (585-300) 35 UNDER
I’d like to thank Corbin for at least mitigating the damage done by the team wins line, as Carroll fell significant short of his rookie campaign in just about every way. Given his early season struggles, I’m actually surprised how close he came still to reaching the over on both the HR and RBI tallies. After the game on July 6th, he had just two home-runs and 23 RBI, so it’s amazing he fell just a pair of HR and half a dozen RBI short. The one over line was runs, where his 121 tally was the highest by any Diamondback for 23 years. It trails only Luis Gonzalez’s 128 in 2001, and Jay Bell’s franchise record of 132 runs scored in 1999. It will be interesting to see where Carroll’s lines are set for 2025. May be a good over candidate?
- Ketel Marte HR 23.5 (65-365), 36 OVER
- Ketel Marte RBI 80.5 (1930-0), 95 OVER
- Ketel Marte Runs 94.5 (300-130), 93 UNDER
That’s an interesting season for Marte, who rediscovered his power in no uncertain fashion, with a career high 36 homers. Indeed, he had only 23 doubles, the fewest by a D-back in a 30-homer season since Mark Reynolds (17 double, 32 home-runs) in 2010. Given that, and the easy over for RBI (which was a unanimous hit with betters, nobody at all taking the under), it’s a surprise that Runs did not follow suit. Basically, Marte scored 36 times on his own volition, but only 57 times courtesy of everyone else. That’s not common: take last year, where Marte hit eleven fewer homers, and actually had one more run scored. I suspect any Ketel lines next year will be considerably higher.
And that’s a good point at which to pause. In a couple of weeks, we will have the balance of the lines, including those for Christian Walker, Eugenio Suarez, Lourdes Gurriel and the pitching staff, We’ll also have the final tallies of results, and you can all gloat in your meaningless triumph, or bemoan the loss of all that zero-value currency.