The Red Sox are Las Vegas' favorites to win the World Series, leading the final eight teams with 15/4 odds to take it all.
The full table, courtesy of Bovada:
Boston Red Sox -- 15/4
Los Angeles Dodgers -- 9/2
Detroit Tigers -- 19/4
St. Louis Cardinals -- 11/2
Atlanta Braves -- 7/1
Oakland Athletics -- 15/2
Tampa Bay Rays -- 8/1
Pittsburgh Pirates -- 10/1
Of course, even as the favorites, the Red Sox are unlikely to win the World Series, which is true of any team that makes the crapshoot known as the playoffs.
When we start talking about just making the World Series, though, that number becomes 9/5, just barely ahead of the Tigers at 2/1. In a distant fourth, the Rays, whose 4/1 figure to take the AL Pennant makes you pause and consider the kooky math Vegas works where the least likely team pays out only as well as a random selection would. But we all know the nature of gambling, that's a story for somewhere else at some other time.
The story here, perhaps, should be the fact that the Red Sox are at 15/4 when back before the season began they were at 30/1. Looking at the pennant odds, those have jumped up all the way from 14/1. The Athletics were similarly underrated, coming in at 16/1 to win the pennant and 33/1 to win the World Series.
The Red Sox have done a good job at proving Vegas' evaluation of them as an average team wrong all year long. Even with the full weight of the first half behind them, the Sox could only get 17/4 odds to win the American League and 9/1 to win the World Series. Now that they're actually the favorites, let's hope they prove the oddsmakers right instead.