Jeff Haney on sports books’ confidence in the Yankees

Monday, May 15, 2006 | 7:20 a.m.

Not only are the New York Yankees heavily favored in Las Vegas sports books to win the American League East, the AL pennant and the World Series, but they also command enough interest among gamblers to have a proposition wager of their own.

The Palms sports book has a seasonlong prop asking bettors to predict whether the Yankees will make the playoffs.

The price on "Yes," the Yankees will make the playoffs this season, is minus-250, meaning bettors risk $2.50 for each $1 they're trying to win.

The price on "No," the Yankees will miss the playoffs, is plus-220, meaning bettors win $2.20 (plus their original stake back) for each $1 they risk.

Here's a good way to analyze this prop rather than just guessing whether the Yanks will make it to the postseason:

I rely on the statistics experts at the Baseball Prospectus organization (baseballprospectus.com), who continually estimate each team's chances of making the playoffs by running a "Monte Carlo" simulation of the rest of the season - essentially a method that projects possible outcomes by running a large number of computer simulations.

Their latest estimation gives the Yankees a 73.7 percent chance of making the playoffs.

Converting that percentage to a money line yields a result of minus-280 - higher than the Palms' current offering. If minus-280 is the correct price, then laying minus-250 at the Palms would give a bettor an advantage against the house of about 3.1 percent.

At the current odds, it appears the "Yes" side of that prop offers some value for bettors.

St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols is the subject of a proposition bet just posted at the Caesars Palace sports book regarding how many home runs he will hit this season.

With a major league-leading 19 home runs through the Cardinals' first 37 games, Pujols is on a pace to finish with a record 83 home runs.

Oddsmakers at Caesars opened the line on Pujols' homers at over or under 57 1/2, even money on the over, minus-130 (risk $1.30 to win $1) on the under.

The Las Vegas Hilton sports book has had a prop on the board all season on the number of home runs the major league leader will hit in 2006 - whether it's Pujols or someone else. That number stood at over/under 52 1/2 homers over the weekend.

Those figures reflect the difficulty of maintaining such a hot pace for the rest of the season, as well as the fact that opposing managers might elect to begin intentionally walking Pujols much more frequently, robbing him of home run opportunities.

Caesars Palace is aggressively courting auto racing bettors, according to a spokesman, by posting lines on Busch Series races each Monday or Tuesday of race week, depending on the release of the field by NASCAR officials. This allows fans to get their action down early and to match their opinion against fresh betting lines.

Caesars also posts betting lines on the following NASCAR Nextel Cup race upon the completion of each week's race, and is featuring female star Danica Patrick in a selection of head-to-head driver matchups for the Indianapolis 500 (May 28).

The lone exception to the strong motorsports betting menu comes in Formula One. Caesars opted to stop booking that form of racing after F1 standout Michael Schumacher, on the way to clinching the circuit title, was permitted to pass teammate Rubens Barrichello on the track in a controversial 2002 incident.

(It was Caesars' decision to stop taking bets; gambling on F1 is still permitted in Nevada.)