Vegas has Cubs Over/Under at 72 Wins

[TyrionLannister]

With the season slowly coming closer lines are being put up, and the Cubs currently pegged at 72 wins for the 2013 season.

What are your current predictions?

[Vandelay16]

79-82 wins
Based on my lack of knowledge.

[ty_smitty21]

Sounds about right. A lot would have to happen for the Cubs to make a run at .500 this year.

I think the team they have would have a chance at .500, but they'll probably trade more players away in July, which will result in more losses in the 2nd half.

[NYF]

Under. Need to be sellers one more year.

[poodski]

I will be an optimist and take the over. Pyth had us at 65 wins last year so thats what I will go off of.

I think the pitching will be quite a bit better. Rizzo and Castro should continue to develop. I don't think we go over by much, but gun to my head I would take the over.

73-76 wins is my guess.

[gocubs2118]

It depends who they trade off. I'll say over just because I think we'll be better than most people think. Plus, we won't have Raley, Rusin, Germano pitching for us the last two month of the season.

[Chicago657]

I think they hit 81. I'll be disappointed by anything less than 77. I don't know why, but I'm optimistic. Looking at the possible WARs players can put up, we might win over half our games.

Conservative estimates:
12 from the rotation
15-17 from the field
2 from the rotation
That's about 30 WAR. Last year teams won around 45-55 games of their real wins minus team WAR. This easily has us over the 72 wins Vegas projects.

[socherball]

On the Vegas subject, I was there for a conference last week and swung by the sportsbook. At the time, the odds for the Cubs winning the World Series in 2013 were 20-1. Down from 50-1 when they opened.

[poodski]

Just so you know we had 9.1 from the rotation. -1.5 from the bullpen, and 13.5 from the offense.

With your guestimations thats only an additional 10-12 wins, which puts us at 71-73 wins.

Assuming you follow WAR to the dot, and using a 48.5 win baseline for the NL we should have been at 69.6 wins. So yeah you got us about right based on that.

[poodski]

On the Vegas subject, I was there for a conference last week and swung by the sportsbook. At the time, the odds for the Cubs winning the World Series in 2013 were 20-1. Down from 50-1 when they opened.

My god thats awful, but people will bet on them because they do every year.

Bovada has em at 75/1

[Chazm]

I think we have a chance at 77 wins but we won't get that because we will be sellers once again. I think the over under of 72.5 is perfect. Could be either way but I'll predict under because after the allstar break it's all downhill

[Max Power]

Under. The offense is still pretty bad and I believe they want one more year of a top ten pick for stocking the system, budget, and for having that protected pick which might come in handy next offseason

[Mell413]

I think they will be over, but not by much. Id say about 75 games.

[deltaclown]

Over, but it's close. I'm a little disappointed we didn't at least continue adding pen arms to try to steal some extra wins Baltimore/Oakland style. The Grilli/Uehara rumors were music to my ears.

[ABE32]

I say 72 on the dot and we finish 5 out for the last spot so we will be drafting at # 5