Flash back to the middle of winter and you'll find the St. Louis Blues well out of the NHL playoff picture and sitting on some long odds -- 250-1, to be exact -- to win the Stanley Cup. What happened next is the stuff betting dreams are made of as St. Louis heated up enough to reach the playoffs, advanced through the postseason and outlasted the Boston Bruins to win the franchise's first title. And those who were bold -- or lucky -- enough to bet on the Blues were rewarded in a major way.
So as we hit the halfway point of the major league season, we started wondering if there could be an MLB equivalent of hockey's unlikely champions -- and who that team could be. To adjust for the reality that the NHL playoffs and MLB playoffs are not equals and an out-of-nowhere baseball champion is even more unlikely, we stretched the parameters from looking for another 250-1 team to simply a team with long odds outside the playoff picture and asked our MLB and gambling experts who they thought could be this year's MLB version of the Blues and why. Here is what they said: