The American League Most Valuable Player Award will be handed out Thursday, and sportsbooks could be headed for a split decision.
Key Takeaways
- The race for AL MVP is a tight one with only two players on the FanDuel market’s board.
- Dead-heat rules will apply at sportsbooks when it comes to a co-MVP decision.
- Judge and Raleigh both enjoyed tremendous seasons and given voters much to think about.
When the MLB’s regular season wrapped up, New York Yankees outfielder/DH Aaron Judge and Seattle Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh were the only two players on the board in FanDuel’s MVP futures market.
Judge held an odds edge at -380 to take home the AL’s top award with just over a week left in the season, and Raleigh was +300 to win his first MVP honor. However, there’s still a chance that the Baseball Writers Association of America’s 30 voters make the two star hitters co-MVPs. That’s never happened in the AL, and the only occurrence since 1931 came in 1979 when Keith Hernandez and Willie Stargell shared the award.
MLB recently released a poll of 14 team executives to get their takes on the AL MVP race, and Raleigh received seven votes, with one voter giving it to both of them. So, what happens if the latter officially occurs?
Read the rules
According to FanDuel, DraftKings, Caesars Sportsbook, bet365, Fanatics Sportsbook, and other U.S. sports betting operators, a dead-heat rule would apply.
“If an award or statistical category lead is shared, then bets will be settled using ‘Dead Heat’ rules,” Fanatics Sportsbook states in its house rules. “Where a market has concluded and there are more winners than were expected given the market name and terms, where no tie break exists to determine a sole winner, bets will be settled as ‘dead heat’ with stakes divided by the number of winners.”
That means the odds for the winner would be reduced. In this case, Judge bettors would receive half of the original payout at the time of the wager. The same goes for Raleigh backers.
It might be a tough pill to swallow for bettors who feel like they won the full bet because the guy they picked was named MVP, but by placing a wager, customers agree to the terms and conditions of that betting market.
Why so close?
Judge and Raleigh had tremendous seasons and will make it hard for the voters.
Judge finished the year batting .331 with a 1.144 OPS and a .688 slugging percentage, the AL leader in each category. The Yankees star hit 53 home runs, with 114 RBIs and 137 runs scored in 541 at-bats across 152 games.
Raleigh was the MLB leader in home runs (60) and AL leader in RBIs (125). He surpassed Mickey Mantle for the record number of homers in a season by a switch-hitter. Raleigh also scored 110 runs and was second behind only Judge in bWAR and fWAR, two advanced metrics that show how important a player is to his team.
