Jordan Walker is a Rookie of the Year favorite. Cardinals aren't a top World Series choice.

It’s less than a week until the baseball season opens, and the three local walk-in sportsbooks have stepped up to the plate with a bevy of betting options ranging from the basic, such as picking the team that will win the World Series, to the more exotic — such as individual player matchups on who will belt the most home runs.

We’ll concentrate on Cardinals-related offerings, given that the buildup to Thursday afternoon’s home (and season) opener already is in full force.

WALKER WAGER: Think hotshot Cards outfield prospect Jordan Walker will tear things up this year? The books think most bettors do. He is the favorite to win National League Rookie of the Year honors at one of the area books and the No. 2 choice at the others.

Walker is +360 at DraftKings (East St. Louis), just ahead of runner-up Corbin Carroll of the Diamondbacks, who was at +400. (A successful $100 wager at +360 yields a profit of $360.) Argosy (Alton) has Carroll at +325 with Walker next at +400. FanDuel (Collinsville) has Carroll at +350 and Walker at +400.

NL MVP RACE: The Cardinals’ Paul Goldschmidt won it last year, but the bookies don’t have much confidence in him repeating. The best price on him at the local joints is +1500, at FanDuel. Eight players are ahead of him there, including Cards teammate Nolan Arenado (+1200). The Padres’ Juan Soto (+550) is the favorite.

CARDINAL VS. CARDINAL: Argosy is offering an interesting prop bet: Who will hit more home runs this season, Goldschmidt or Arenado? The bettor has to risk $113 to try to win $100 on either player. (Goldschmidt had 35 last year, Arenado was at 30). A similar prop was offered on head-to-head matchups with players on other teams.

CY-AYONARA?: The books don’t think much of the Cardinals’ starting pitching staff, at least in terms of the likelihood of a Cy Young Award candidate being on the roster. Only one of the shops even had odds on a Redbirds hurler to win the honor. DraftKings had the Cards’ Adam Wainwright, who will start the season on the injury list, and teammate Jordan Montgomery at +10000. Those are tied for the longest odds of any of the players listed. Anyone bold enough to take a flyer on either of them would reap a $10,000 profit on a $100 risk.

TITLE TALK: The Redbirds are in the second tier of World Series favorites. The Astros, Braves, Yankees, Dodgers, Padres and Mets were in the +600 to +1000 range. The Cards were in a larger group in the +1100 to +2200 territory, and the variance a the three books underscores the importance of shopping around for the best prices.

At Argosy, the Cards were +2200. At FanDuel, they were +2000, and at DraftKings, the line was +1600. So if you’d cash, your profit on a $100 bet would be $1,600 at DK but $2,200 at Argosy. That’s a $600 difference from best odds to worst. (All betting numbers listed in this story are what was available Friday, March 24.)

PENNANT FEVER: The Cardinals’ price of winning the National League pennant ranged from +750 at DraftKings to +1000 at FanDuel and Argosy. There were discrepancies in odds for the Birds to roost atop the NL Central, too. They were -125 at DraftKings, -129 at Argosy and -130 at FanDuel.

St. Louis City SC’s surprising 4-0-0 start, something never before accomplished for a Major League Soccer expansion team, continues to reward those who have been wagering on the local club.

In its first three games, City was the underdog, sometimes hefty, on the three-way line. That includes the option of betting on the match ending in a tie as well as a price on each team to win.) Using the most favorable odds available at the local books, a $100 win bet on City each time would have been worth a profit of $895. But the team was favored last week, with the best price being -115, and it responded with a 3-0 victory over San Jose. A $100 risk would have yielded a profit of just under $87. So City SC now has those who have bet a “C-note” on them each week, at the most favorable odds, ahead $982.

An aside here: In this space last week, we selected San Jose to win that game because the price was just too good to pass up. We were getting double our money back, and that was on the two-way line — a tie would have led to a refund of the bet, not a loss as it would have on the three-way line.

It took something that never had happened before to beat us — an MLS expansion team winning its first four matches. Plus other factors were making the potential reward well worth the risk. So be it. If you can’t stomach losses in such value-rich situations, you have no business “investing” in sports wagering.

City is back in the underdog role this week, for its game Saturday night in Salt Lake City. DraftKings had the best three-way line odds locally, +265.

It was an embarrassing loss last Saturday for Mizzou’s men’s basketball team, not only being beaten as the favorite by Princeton in the second round of the NCAA Tournament but being blown out.

MU’s 78-63 defeat, as a 6 1/2-point favorite on the closing line, was jarring to those who thought the Tigers had a wide-open path to go far in the tourney. But there was some good news for MU basketball fans last weekend. The Tigers no longer hold the dubious distinction of suffering the worst point spread loss by a favored team in NCAA Tournament history.

Mizzou’s 86-84 loss to Norfolk State in 2012 had topped the list of infamy, a game in which the Tigers were a 21-point favorite. But that was eclipsed last weekend when Fairleigh Dickinson — a 23 1/2-point underdog — ousted Purdue 63-58.

It was just the second time in the tournament’s history that a No. 16 seed beat a No. 1 seed. The other instance came in 2018 when Maryland-Baltimore County upended Virginia. UMBC was a 20-point underdog.

Mizzou also is on the list of the biggest regular-season point spread favorites to lose in the last three decades, falling at home to Charleston Southern in 2019 as a 26-point choice. That ties for the third-largest such upset in that span along with Kentucky, also a 26-point favorite, being upended at home by Gardner-Webb in 2007.

The only worse such regular-season defeats in the last three decades are by Iowa, which fell at home in December as a 32-point favorite over Eastern Illinois, and Duke’s loss to Stephen F. Austin in 2019 as a 27 1/2-point choice.

We were 3-5 last week to stand at 43-41. We dropped three units, leaving us minus nine since the beginning of the football season (selections can range from one • to five •••••). This week’s choices, using the odds that were most favorable Friday afternoon among the area’s sportsbooks:

UConn vs. Gonzaga, NCAA Tournament, 7:49 p.m. Saturday in Las Vegas: These teams love to push things, which should lead to offensive glitz in an arena just a few steps off the Las Vegas Strip. These teams average a combined 83.5 points per game and don’t look for them to slow down here.

Meanwhile, UConn has cruised in its three NCAA tourney games, winning by an average of 20.6 points per outing and all by at least 15 while Gonzaga has fought to three-point wins in its last two.

Two of the nation’s top-25 scoring teams are in the Big East Conference with Connecticut, and the Huskies went 1-4 against them (Xavier, Marquette) this season. Gonzaga is the nation’s top-scoring team, averaging 87 points.

Game total over 153 (Argosy) •••

Gonzaga +2 1/2 points (FanDuel) ••

First half total over 72 points (Argosy) •

St. Louis Battlehawks at Vegas Vipers, 6 p.m. Saturday: Vegas is the worst team in the XFL’s North Division, with its only win coming over the worst team in the South — winless Orlando. The Battlehawks’ offense should be able to move against the league’s worst total defense (366.2 yards per game allowed) and run defense (142.8 yards/game). Battlehawks -3 (DraftKings, FanDuel)