How one oddsmaker looks at the Orioles after the Jimenez and Cruz additions

We often seem to enjoy looking at projections for how a team or player will do before each season. One of those projections is the over-under wins total set by oddsmakers and sportsbooks. I wondered, for instance, if the Orioles' recent additions of Ubaldo Jimenez and Nelson Cruz created a sizable change in how the oddsmakers looked at the club. The answer is that it didn't. Bovada.lv, the online casino and sportsbook, had the Orioles' over-under wins total at 77.5 before those signings and 80.5 after. I asked Kevin Bradley, the Bovada.lv's sportsbook manager, if that was reasonable movement for those additions. "These move more with pitcher movement between teams usually than a hitter," Bradley said. "(Nelson) Cruz probably plays a little less into it. The pitcher may add one or two wins. Jimenez has been inconsistent and wouldn't be a guy to have a huge impact. Clayton Kershaw or (Justin) Verlander, for instance, if (they) were to move, (they) could move a team by five or seven wins, something like that. "When teams sign or trade players or there are injuries, that can impact win totals and futures odds. Then also the way we see money come in impacts that, too, and we adjust off that." The Orioles have gone over their preseason total pretty easily with back-to-back winning seasons. Those numbers were in the 70 range before the 2012 season and started at 77.5, going to 78.5 before last season. There is no reason for a fan to get too worked up about any lack of respect here. The sportsbooks are just looking to find a number to induce betting on each side of their numbers. "We are not really trying to project what will actually happen," Bradley said. "We are trying to put up a number that is fair for betting purposes. We want two-way action." By the way, the Orioles odds went from 40-1 to 33-1 to win the World Series after their recent signings. They went from 18-1 to 16-1 to win the American League and from 12-1 to 9-1 to take the AL East. So what is involved in setting those over-under numbers? "We first look at our World Series and our division odds and make sure they correlate to the win totals," Bradley said. "We look at how they did last year and how people bet them last year and going back two and three years. Then we look at projections for this year. "An example of how this can change is Toronto. Last year, they signed a lot of guys and had big expectations and their win totals were in the high 80s. Obviously they went way under. But they also had a lot of injuries. We take that into consideration and if healthy, they should probably be better than last year. So they are at 79.5, still higher than last year's over-under." Right now, Bovada has 16 teams with a higher over-under total than the Orioles and three higher in the AL East. Here are the Bovada over/under numbers for each MLB team: Los Angeles Dodgers - 92.5 St. Louis Cardinals - 90.5 Detroit Tigers - 89.5 Oakland Athletics - 88.5 Tampa Bay Rays - 88.5 Washington Nationals - 88.5 Atlanta Braves - 87.5 Boston Red Sox - 87.5 Los Angeles Angels - 86.5 New York Yankees - 86.5 San Francisco Giants - 86.5 Texas Rangers - 86.5 Cincinnati Reds - 84.5 Pittsburgh Pirates - 83.5 Kansas City Royals - 81.5 Seattle Mariners - 81.5 Arizona Diamondbacks - 80.5 Baltimore Orioles - 80.5 Cleveland Indians - 80.5 Milwaukee Brewers - 79.5 Toronto Blue Jays - 79.5 San Diego Padres - 78.5 Colorado Rockies - 76.5 Philadelphia Phillies - 76.5 Chicago White Sox - 75.5 New York Mets - 73.5 Minnesota Twins - 70.5 Chicago Cubs - 69.5 Miami Marlins - 69.5 Houston Astros - 62.5