Top 5 Sports Upsets of 2018 – Where Does UMBC’s Win Rank?

• We’re rounding up the five biggest upsets of 2018
• Molinari, Blake Snell, UMBC, and more
• What would a parlay have got me?

As SBD’s resident upset expert, it falls to me to round up the five biggest upsets of 2018. These are the bets nobody would have seen coming, except of course for everyone who lied about having this bet slip afterwards.

5: Stefanos Tsipsitas Makes the Canadian Open Final

Not one huge upset, but a string of pretty stout upsets.

Beating Dominic Thiem, Novak Djokovic, Alexander Zverev, and Kevin Anderson all in a row is hugely improbable for a 19 year old who has never made the top 10, but Stefanos Tsipsitas did it, and become one of the few players to make a Masters 1000 final in the Big 4 era.

It’s likely that Stefanos will have slightly inflated odds against top players for the next few years. He deserves it!

4: Old Dominion (+28) beats Virginia Tech

Virginia Tech had problems with defensive depth in 2018, but they didn’t really show up until their fourth game.

The Hokies had cruised through Delaware, Florida State, William & Mary, and had their East Carolina game cancelled. They were ranked a tasteful #13 in the AP Poll.

The betting market put the spread on their game with Old Dominion at 28 points, and expected a blowout.

That, uhhh, didn’t happen, and ODU torched Virginia Tech. Jonathan Duhart caught 9 passes for 142 yards and 3 touchdowns. It was fun as hell.

3: UMBC (#16) beats Virginia (#1)

Where were you, when the best college basketball team in the country got waxed by the UMBC Retrievers?

Quick quiz: do you remember what UMBC stands for? I don’t! Do you remember what they did for the rest of the NCAA Tournament? Nobody does!

*University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and they lost to Kansas State in the next round.

2: Francesco Molinari (+10000) Wins The Open

Golf futures always give pretty crazy odds, but Francesco Molinari winning the Open Championship was a wild payday for a few bettors. In April, Molinari’s odds were at +10000, and came down to +3300 as the tournament approach.

Molinari played extremely well that weekend, and held off a late/terrible charge from Rory McIlroy to seal the win.

1: Blake Snell Wins the AL Cy Young

Anyone who tells you they saw this coming is lying.

In his first two seasons in the major leagues, Snell had put up ERAs of 3.54 and 4.04. In 2017, he was demoted to Durham and didn’t return to the team until late July.

He entered the 2018 season as the #2 starter, behind Chris Archer. At the All-Star break, he wasn’t originally on the AL roster.

Here’s 34 seconds of the nastiest @snellzilla4 breaking balls from 2018.

Favoring sliders and curveballs more often while keeping them low and out of the zone made him flat-out unhittable.

Blake Snell deserves the 2018 AL Cy Young award. pic.twitter.com/muiyILevHu

— Pitcher List (@PitcherList) November 14, 2018

Snell would finish the season with an ERA of 1.89, the lowest the American League had seen in 18 years. Just a wildly productive season, and one of the best in baseball’s history.

What if I Parlayed all These Bets?

We can all dream, right?