2024 World Series pick: Best bets at the All-Star Break

With MLB on hiatus due to the All-Star Break, it is a great time to take a step back from the day-to-day grind and look into some futures bets with value.

For today’s article, we will be looking into the most important future bet there is to make in baseball: the World Series. With last year’s World Series participants — the champion Rangers and runner-up Diamondbacks — struggling to gain any traction this year, this year’s World Series is as open as it gets.

2024 MLB World Series Odds

It is not a huge surprise that the Dodgers are the favorites to win the World Series, as top to bottom they have the most talent in MLB across their lineup, starting pitching and bullpen. The issue with the Dodgers, though, is that we have no idea if any single one of their starting pitchers is going to be healthy for the playoffs, as they currently have the three studs of Clayton Kershaw, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow all on the IL. Along with those three, Max Muncy, Mookie Betts, Walker Buehler, Joe Kelly and Jayson Heyward are on the shelf. They all are expected to return this season, but health is going to be a risk.

It is interesting to see the Yankees with the best odds in the AL as they had an absolutely brutal June, but it makes sense just from a pure talent level. They have some injury concerns as well with Giancarlo Stanton and Anthony Rizzo, but the biggest concern with the Yankees is with their starting pitching. Gerrit Cole has not quite been himself since he came back from injury, while rookie phenom Luis Gil has slowed down after his scorching start.

In terms of value, here are our two favorite World Series bets to lock in, with one pick each in the NL and the AL.

Pick 1: Atlanta Braves (+1000) Caesars

Due to the season-ending injuries to their best pitcher — Spencer Strider — and batter — Ronald Acuna Jr. — and with the Phillies running away with the division, the Braves have somewhat been written off. However, if the past two seasons have shown us anything, winning the NL East does not mean anything in the playoffs, as each of the past two years the Braves have run away with the division only to lose to their division rival Phillies in the playoffs.

We have also seen this movie before with the Braves, who won the World Series in 2021 without Acuna Jr., who missed most of that season with a torn ACL. It is not as though the Braves are having a bad season, either. They are 8.5 games back from the Phillies in the NL East, but they are 11 games above .500 with a +65 run differential. Those are not elite numbers, but the sign of a good baseball team. They are also almost guaranteed to make the playoffs, as they currently lead the NL Wild Card race by 4 games.

To be clear, losing Acuna Jr. and Strider definitely hurts but this is still a talented team. They have a solid trio of starters in Chris Sale, Max Fried and Reynaldo Lopez, the latter of which currently leads MLB in ERA. Overall their pitching has been very good, as they have the best team FIP in MLB and the second-best expected FIP.

The biggest difference between the Braves of last year and this year are the bats. The Braves set a record with the number of home runs they hit last year, but this year almost the entirety of their lineup outside of Marcell Ozuna is slumping. The biggest slumper is Matt Olson, who led the league in home runs last year but looks lost at the plate this year. If the Braves bats can get close to what they were last year, then they could be this year’s Cinderella team that makes the World Series as a Wild Card team like the Phillies in 2022 and the Diamondbacks in 2023.

Pick 2: Cleveland Guardians (+1700) Caesars

The Guardians are one spot behind the Braves with the sixth-best odds to win the World Series, but they are the best value bet on the board at +1700 odds. For starters, they have the second-best record in MLB and the best record in the AL.

Admittedly, the starting pitching for the Guardians is not where it needs to be at this moment in time. The season-ending injury to Shane Beiber hurts, so they will need to make some moves at the trade deadline to shore up their pitching, but the recipe for the Guardians is a simple one: hope their bats give them the lead early in the game and rely on their stellar bullpen to shut out the opposing offense in the later innings. Think back to the 2015 Royals and how they were able to win the series thanks to their bullpen being downright unhittable.

They have the lowest team bullpen ERA in MLB at 2.62 with the second-most saves as well. When you look into the individual members of their bullpen it all starts to make sense, and it begins with their closer in Emmanuel Clase. Clase is dominant, with an 0.81 ERA, which is the best in MLB of all pitchers that have thrown 40 innings. He is second in MLB in saves with 29 and three blown saves, giving him a save percentage of 90.6%. After Clase the Guardians have Hunter Gaddis, who has an ERA of 1.19, which is the third-best ERA in the MLB.

Their bats have some pop too with Jose Ramirez and Josh Naylor, who have the 10th and the 11th-best ISO rate in MLB. Then, they have the batting average leader in Steven Kwan, who is hitting .352. Unsurprisingly, Kwan has the tenth-best WAR (wins-above replacement) in the MLB as well. If they can get Kwan on base and then one of Ramirez or Naylor brings him home with a dinger, their bullpen can do the rest and close out the game.

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