Trust me I'm not a compulsive gambler but I have bet on baseball before so that is probably enough to label me as a gambler (who in their right mind would bet on baseball?). I have always been fascinated with Over/Under from Vegas. Although not an expert, the obvious point for Vegas is to get people interested in their teams. Thus the Over/Under is designed to get bettors interested in the line. Therefore it is not an exact number to which Vegas believes the team will win but a close enough approximation to have people take either the over or under. A more in depth talk on this can be found here and here (and some early talk about this year's number here). As my Dad always said Vegas wasn't built on winners and so I trust the numbers they throw up in their sports books must have some "truth" or "science" to it. Based on this I have monitored the last three years of MLB Over/Unders. See below.

Needless to say our Rockies have not exactly performed as Vegas would have expected. In fact next to the Cubs our hometown favorites have been miserable. Expectations have seemingly crushed our team. Especially miserable has been the last two years. So the question to me then is how can Vegas be so far off on some of these teams and what does it mean?

A quick and easy culprit is the injury bug. Injuries to Tulo, Helton, and the pitching staff led to some of the demise. While this is the low hanging fruit I would suggest that injuries aren't the main culprit. In this article (yes it is about the White Sox and projections but inside is a nice injury chart) and it shows that while injuries have mattered, some teams above the Rockies have still been able to perform. What this might actually suggest is the real lack of depth in the minors and the inability to put someone in that is anything but a "replacement" player might be more of Rockies fault.

So if injury and lack of minor league depth matter what else could be the cause? If paper and "science" suggest a good team and that team doesn't perform then what? Are the Rockies simply quitting? That is the problem with all the wonders of statistics is that how do you measure why a team doesn't meet expectations. Projections versus real life seemingly work well with other teams but why not the Rockies? Thoughts?