College World Series odds: Championships

Only two teams remain, and no later than Wednesday night, we’ll have our 2009 NCAA Division I baseball champion. Both Texas and LSU blew through their bracket undefeated and will begin a three-game series tonight.

As you may have noticed if you’ve been following the odds reports since the beginning of the tournament, the margins have kept getting smaller. Back in the first round, many of the favorites were very heavily…well, favored, but as we’ve progressed through the super-regionals and the brackets at Omaha, there have been many more 55 percents than 65 percents. Basically, Texas-LSU is a coin flip.

By my strength rating (based on runs scored and allowed, adjusted for home-field advantage and strength of schedule), these two teams are the 4th and 6th best in the nation this year. LSU’s strength rating is .777 while Texas’s is .760. The Longhorns gain back a little of that difference by virtue of their No. 1 seed, which makes them the “home” team. (Teams get a slight edge from batting last even if they don’t have the advantage of playing in their home park.) Our final odds:

Team              Champ  

Texas             47.1%  
Louisiana State   52.9%