The 2025 MLB Season Begins With the Dodgers as Heavy Favorites, Boasting a Star-Studded Roster
Early Favorites
Finding the winners of a given sport during the season is never bad, but if you can determine the champion beforehand, there’s some serious coin on the horizon. As with any league. MLB futures odds are available right after the previous season.
Pick the winner of the World Series among the 30 and grab a generous return on the wager because it’s a bet with risk. First, more variables are involved, starting with the composition of a team’s roster after free agency, trades, and minor-league arrivals.
Second, it’s a long season, and players get hurt like in any sport. How a team overcomes the maladies is crucial to its success, or lack thereof.
The MLB odds are out to win each of the six divisions, the league pennant, and the World Series as well.
Here’s some info regarding the baseball betting board ahead of the 2025 season…
Who’s Favored to Win the World Series in 2025?
As of this early February 2025 writing, it’s the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers as strong 11-4 (+275) choices to repeat as titlists, according to 2025 World Series futures odds.
Which Baseball Team is Most Likely to Win the World Series?
As was mentioned, there’s no resting on their laurels by the 2024 champion Los Angeles Dodgers. Favored to repeat as per MLB future odds, in part because the team has cornered the market on Japanese talent.
LA has Shohei Otani, Roki Sasaki, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto on their pitching staff, all armed with a filthy splitter. It was that trio that helped Japan win 2023’s World Baseball Classic.
The non-believers in the Dodgers going all the way may instead try them to win the National League West at a minuscule 1-5 (-500) or the pennant in the NL at 8-5 (+160).
Remember, the odds can fluctuate, and those listed (division, league, World Series) were as of late January in 2025.
How to Read MLB Betting Odds?
As with all sports, there are any number of ways to wager, certainly not all including MLB futures odds, which were previously mentioned.
We are concentrating here on the individual game. It is easiest to start with the basic bet, as in who wins. Since the Los Angeles Dodgers have been prominently sprinkled throughout the story, let’s use them in this example.
LA is hosting its bitter rivals, the San Francisco Giants, in a game at Dodger Stadium (or Chavez Ravine, if you prefer).
Since the Dodgers are usually favored in any game, we are making them -180 to win this one. If you’re uninitiated, everything is relative to a $100 base, meaning if a bettor wishes to take the Dodgers, he/she has to wager $180 to win $100.
The same game might find the underdog Giants at +160, meaning those bettors would wager $100 to win $160.
A couple of quick points before we go any further…
1-You don’t have to wager $100. That’s just a base figure. You may use any amount, but that -180/$160 are the odds for calculating this particular wager. Another example would be wagering $90 on the Dodgers to win $50 or wagering $50 on the Giants to win $80.
2-Odds are always set in such a way that the public cannot bet both sides in a contest and be guaranteed a profit. In other words, favored teams come with a higher risk (in this case -180) than underdogs come with a reward (again, in this case, $160).
There are other ways to wager, including the “run line.” This is similar to a “puck line” in the National Hockey League, where a bettor can add (underdog) or subtract (favorite) a given number of runs to a team’s final total.
Using this Giant/Dodger game, it may have a run line of 1½. Thus, the bettor can add 1½ runs to the Giants’ total (with corresponding odds) or subtract 1½ runs to the tally of LA (again with corresponding odds).
What is important to remember here is that a favored home team does not bat in the bottom of the ninth, meaning if LA is leading, 5-4, after 8½ innings and you’re “laying” a run-and-a-half, it’s a winner, and you’re a loser (nothing personal).
It’s a tough way to get beat (same as an empty-net goal in hockey), but the bettor knows that (or should) ahead of time.
Other ways to wager also have their specific odds and parameters.
Any Final Thoughts?
We have outlined MLB future odds and the ability to cash a fat ticket if you can figure out who wins the title before the season even begins. This sort of wager requires a fair amount of homework, patience, and disposable income because your money is padlocked until the champion is decided.
