i remember the broadcasters talking on tv about how the sox were the favorite in the series because after the 3-0 collapse with the yanks, they were saying how boston was supposed to win the series anyways cause they were the favorites. why? im not too sure either cause like you said yanks won the division and were defending AL champs. but i remember them saying how the year prior would have been an upset, the collapse was big yes, but they said it was expected for the bosox to win the series in the first place because they were the favorites.

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Yeah, cernig's right. Despite their aggressive committment to being seen as the scrappy underdog, the Sox were definitely the favorite going into the series. It was largely because the yankees pitching staff had been decimated by injuries and the sox had schilling and pedro, and their bullpen was looking really strong. And..the yanks bullpen/starters were...well the yanks bullpen/starters.

Regarding the comeback odds, maybe you're right. it's a little tricky determining absolute values for things like this bc you have to take into account batters' avg against pitchers, winning records in specific circumstances, etc. But the odds of the red sox staging a comeback in 2004, excluding any historical mitigating factors, was around 19 to 1.

When they were down 3 games, they became a 9-1 underdog to get through series, (vegas odds). But they only won like 10% of the time Mo came in the 9th, so if you factored in that (since the comeback basically was fueled by Mo's blown save), and their home-away record, (they had to win the last 2 at yankee stadium), the odds would be around 50 to 1.

But yeah, I"m not wholly certain about this stuff, maybe like 80% confident. If you find something that says otherwise, let me know, and I"ll change it. Unless it says the odds were more than 500-1, in which case it screws up my argument. (kidding. Sort of.)

Anyways, thanks for reading, and the comments!!

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