Top MLB Futures Betting Pick: Best Bet to Win NL Central (2022)
The MLB offseason is getting more and more complicated as the winter drags on. With tentative Spring Training dates quickly approaching, the likelihood of an actual lockout that may result in a shortened season is seeming more realistic by the hour. It’s a scary thought for baseball fans and baseball bettors, but let’s keep our fingers crossed that this dispute gets resolved before any games need to be taken off the schedule.
This installment of MLB Futures Best Bets is the second of four in February. The first outlined my best bet to win the American League East, and the second will be another division winner wager – this time over in the National League.
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NL Central Division Winner – St. Louis Cardinals (+225)
Talk about value. I understand the Milwaukee Brewers are a really strong team with three legitimate Cy Young Award candidates in their rotation. I understand they’re defending NL Central Champions, and I understand the Cardinals have only won this division—a division they dominated with seven titles from 2004-2015—once since 2015. But there’s simply too much value on St. Louis, a team that absolutely epitomizes consistency and has the star power to go along with it.
Per FanGraphs ZiPS projections, the Cardinals actually have the highest probability to win the NL Central. ZiPS gives them a 49.0% chance, projecting them to edge out the favored Brewers (currently -125) by one game. Milwaukee is given a 39.3% probability to win back-to-back division crowns, for context. The current line of +225 on St. Louis gives them 30.8% implied odds to win the Central, giving our wager an 18.2% edge on the market. Like I said – value.
While everyone is clamoring over Milwaukee and rightfully so – they’re a good team – the Cardinals quietly posted a 46-26 record in the second half of the year in 2021. They came on late and really did an admirable job closing the gap on the Brewers after sitting at 44-46 heading into the All-Star break. In fact, only three other NL teams finished the year with a better record than the Cardinals despite their sub-.500 start and St. Louis actually posted a better record than the NL East and World Series Champion Braves.
The Cardinals are also the epitome of consistency as I mentioned in the open, and that alone holds value. We can be confident that this team will hang around all year, injuries or not, and will be in prime position to hop into first place should any of their division rivals suffer injuries, slumps, or bad fortune. The Cardinals haven’t had a sub-.500 record since 2007, and have had more losses than wins just twice since the turn of the millennium. ZiPS projects 89 wins will be enough to capture the NL Central, and the Cardinals have eclipsed that number in seven of the last 11 years, excluding the COVID-shortened 2020 season.
Finally, this team has been slowly chipping away at building a championship contender, and while the acquisitions of Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado have stolen headlines for good reason, I think they made the move to fit the final piece into the championship puzzle this offseason when they named Oliver Marmol their manager. Moving on from Mike Shildt was a surprise, but the St. Louis brass felt like they had hit their ceiling under his tutelage. Moving on from a manager who was as successful as Shildt proves to me this team thinks they have a championship-caliber roster, they were just a manager away from going for it.
Expect this team to be in the thick of the NL Central race and active at the trade deadline. With stars like Goldschmidt and Arenado anchoring the corners, coupled with the breakout of Tyler O’Neill as a true MVP candidate and the tantalizing potential of Jack Flaherty at the top of the rotation, the Cardinals are somehow flying under the radar. Play them down to +200 to win this division outright.
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