[raulus]

I think the concept of betting for your team becomes a problem due to a few key facts:

1) It’s a long season. A good manager is making moves with the full season in mind, rather than just that game. Because the goal is to win more games in total, not just the ones that you bet on.

2) Moves a manager makes in one game impact the next game. And moves made in previous games impact today’s game. World Series game 7 is the exception, of course, because there’s no tomorrow, and you throw everything you’ve got in an attempt to win. Plus winning game 7 is worth other potential risks that a player might run, like getting injured, or aggravating an existing injury by playing whilst less than 100%.

3) We’re assuming he only bet on some games, and not on all of them. If he bet on all of them, or even almost all of them, then point #1 above is likely no longer relevant.

Since we’re having fun here, let’s dig into an example. Let’s say that Petey bets on the game 5 days from now. Maybe the manager has today’s starter skip his start to rest him up a little more. Or maybe gives him an early hook to avoid running up his pitch count and keep him fresh.

Then in the 2-3 games before the game in question, the manager selectively uses his relievers, deploying them in a fashion to make sure that the best relievers are fresh for the important game, rather than deploying them to win the most games overall.

For added effect, maybe the manager strategically rests some position players to keep them fresh for the important game, and lets the scrubs play more in the other games. You could probably go on here, maybe choosing to keep the other team from seeing some plays like a hit and run or a straight steal or even a bunt against the shift as a means of making it a more effective sneak attack when the important game comes along. Maybe the manager will choose to use a pinch hitter in an odd spot, just to get the hitter an extra look at a reliever that he might face in a critical spot in that future game.

Naturally, if you let your mind wander for long enough, it’s not hard to imagine a long list of moves that a manager could make to improve the odds of winning one game at the expense of other games. Even in relatively mild situations, it’s easy to imagine that 1-2 games around the game in question could be impacted. And in really extreme cases, it could multiply quickly, particularly if a manager ends up pushing a player and he gets hurt, thereby reducing the team’s chances while that player is out.

So particularly for a manager, unless they’re betting on every game, there’s the real possibility that managing like it’s WS game 7 for the games you bet on will adversely impact other games for your team.