The National League Championship Series is very straightforward, as the Los Angeles Dodgers are clearly the better team in their matchup with the Milwaukee Brewers. It is not so cut and dry in the American League Championship Series, though.
The Houston Astros might be the better team, but the Boston Red Sox are also exceptional. It's odd that Vegas is giving the Astros an implied chance of winning this series (58 percent) nearly equal to what they're giving the Dodgers (60 percent) when the talent gap is so much slimmer. Here are my best bets for the series:
Boston Red Sox (+120) vs. Houston Astros (-140)
Game 1 odds: Astros (Justin Verlander) +110 at Red Sox (Chris Sale) -120
Game 1 over/under: 8 (U -120)
In my Dodgers-Brewers preview, I noted that if you were to judge the teams by their regular-season run differential, you'd expect the Dodgers to have won at least 10 more games than the Brewers. According to Baseball Prospectus, the gap between the Astros and Red Sox is nearly half that.
While Houston has the better (and deeper) rotation and the superior bullpen, its offense has had its share of difficulties this season. Jose Altuve, George Springer and Carlos Correa all took steps backward, with Correa's being an enormous one. The Red Sox, meanwhile, have two of the game's five best hitters in their lineup between Mookie Betts and J.D. Martinez. Their offense doesn't have the depth that Houston's does, but given the star power, it's comparable overall. Each team posted an identical 110 wRC+ during the regular season, which means if all we were judging them on was offense, this would be something close to a coin flip.
Despite being an underdog to win the series, oddsmakers have Boston as a favorite to win Game 1. This is due to the presence of Sale, who is one of the two best pitchers in all of baseball and the best in the American League by a huge margin. Sale posted the best FIP, xFIP, SIERA and K/9 in baseball this year, along with a top-three ERA and a top-10 BB/9. And he did it all while pitching his home games in the second-hardest park in baseball for pitchers and in a division where four of the five teams play in hitters' parks.
Sale is one of the best pitchers we've seen in baseball in a long time, and if Boston decides to bring him back on short rest in Game 4 and then again in a potential Game 7, I might even go as far as to call the Red Sox a favorite in this series.
Of course, their rotation does fall off a bit after Sale. While Houston will roll out three legitimate aces after Verlander, Boston will have just David Price (who is inferior to all of Houston's options) on the high end and a Rick Porcello-Nathan Eovaldi borderline-good-but-certainly-not-great duo following him up. This is where Houston presumably picks up most of its win expectancy from oddsmakers, but the effect of Sale really can't be understated.
It's worth noting that the Red Sox, despite dropping the regular-season series between the teams, will hold the home-field advantage during the ALCS. This is particularly relevant because the Red Sox hold the strongest home-field advantage of any team in baseball that doesn't play a mile above sea level. Perhaps it's their familiarity with the unique design of Fenway Park, but whatever it is, they'll have the advantage for the first two games and the final two games (if necessary) in this series. Considering Houston could see Sale twice among those games, that alone should set the Astros up with less than a 58 percent chance to win this series.
When you break everything down, I don't think there's an absolutely clear better team here. It's probably Houston if push comes to shove, but between the nearly equal offenses, Boston's elite home-field advantage and the potential for three Chris Sale games, it's a lot closer than Vegas has it made out to be. If the Red Sox lose a game Sale starts, they are done. But the chances are high enough for them to pick up victories in these games that I have to go with them to win the series.
Pick: Red Sox +120 for the series and -120 for Game 1.