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Place Your Bets on the 2015 Diamondbacks

Since it's an off-day for the team, time to open the doors on the SnakePit Casino for our fourth annual betting pool.

Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Last year, the house took a bit of a beating, with a communal win of S$4,168 [that's SnakePit Dollars, for the ignorant], thanks to the team underperforming expectations. No less than five people - Incomplete Translation, Dallas D'Back Fan, azshadowwalker, shoewizard and dbacks25 - maxed out by winning all their bets to score the top possible return of +S$1,500. Will they be able to repeat that success this year? Fancy your own chances? Read on...

I'm bankrolling each of you with S$1,500 in SnakePit Dollars [actual value 0.00000000000001 cents], which you can divide up and wager on the lines as you think fit. I'll accept entries up until the first pitch on April 6 .If you're unclear on the basic concept, here is the intro from 2012, the first season

A quick bit of explanation, for those unfamiliar with betting parlance. In an "over/under" bet, a sports book will set a number, and bettors can choose on which side of that number the actual result will fall. The most common such is the total points in an NFL game, but it can be run on just about any sporting statistic. If you win, you get double your money [actually, it's typically a shade less than double, the difference being the house edge, but we'll just say double for our purposes here]. If you lose... Well, I trust I need not draw you a picture, but it involves a vice and Joe Pesci, if my recollection of Casino is correct.

For ease of my inputting them into the spreadsheet, entry lines should be in the form:
Wins,
S$300, OVER
which means you are betting Arizona will win more than the specified number. However, so you don't just throw it all on one bet, you can bet no more than S$500 on any single wager, so you've got to have at least three lines. You can have more, of course, by betting less than the limit. Here are the bets on offer, from CBS Sports, but I've adjusted some in the light of subsequent events

  • Wins: 72.5
  • Archie Bradley starts: 9.5
  • Yoan Lopez starts: 4.5
  • All-Stars other than Paul Goldschmidt: 0.5
  • Combined HR for Goldschmidt, Yasmany Tomas and Mark Trumbo: 70.5
  • Tomas' finish in Rookie of the Year voting: 4.5
  • Number of different starting catchers used: 4.5
  • David Peralta's OPS+: 104.5
  • Date of Patrick Corbin's season debut: June 1
  • Date of Aaron Hill trade: July 1