Alex Smart MLB Baseball Handicapping Article: MLB Betting

Betting on Baseball
by Alex Smart

Spring is here and so is Major League Baseball. This week, the 2008 MLB season gets underway in Tokyo when the defending World Champs Boston play two games against the Oakland A's (March 25 and 26).

Throughout a baseball season I am often asked "what is the best way to wager on baseball ... 'Money Line or Run Line'?

To most bettors, they just want the answer in two simple words and one of those ends in “Line.” Very few understand the concept of value.

Baseball is unique because the money line wager allows the bettor to just have his selected team win the game with no other complications. As opposed to other sports, the money line in baseball is in most cases a tolerable number (-200 or less to win at +100) if you are betting the favorites. In football or basketball you seldom see such numbers that low from bookmakers on the money line.

The best teams lure most bettors, much like bee's around a honey pot. In particular, the New York Yankees draw the most attention for sports bettors in MLB and linesmakers know and understand this. They will typically ‘shade’ the Yankees, adding more juice on them as favorites. This was proven yet again last season with New York a -200 or more favorite 40 times, the most in baseball, despite having just the third best record in the American League.

A number of those placing wagers will attempt to “buy down” say a Yankees vs. Kansas City contest in which New York could be a -300 favorite. Oddsmakers are telling you at this price the Yanks have a 75% chance to win. The downside is, the Royals pull off an upset and bettors have extended themselves $275.00 to win a ‘dime’ and came up on the short end.

Certain people will in turn take the game into a point spread situation by using the run line. In this case you take the chance of giving the Royals 1.5 runs to start the game; however you are protecting yourself against a significant loss by wagering -150 instead of -300 to win. The down side to this is in most seasons, roughly 30% of all baseball games are decided by 1 run. What can happen in this situation is the Yankees are up three runs going into the 9th inning and bring in an unfocused relief pitcher, who promptly gives up two runs. New York still wins on the money line, but you lose on the run line after being ‘back-doored’, to borrow a more common football phrase.

Now I am certainly not pertaining to saying the run line is not a solid wager, because it most certainly is, if used correctly. Let’s take a look at the Yankees vs. Royals match-up from September 9, 2007 as an example. The Bronx Bombers were a -210 road favorite on the money line to defeat Kansas City. Wang was on the mound for the Pinstripes and was having yet another solid season and had recorded a 14-2 record with 3 no-decisions since the beginning of June. At the time, the Yankees were 23-5 on the road since 2006 vs. an opponent if their starter had beaten that same opponent by 4 or more runs the last time they faced them. New York had managed to win 19 of those 23 games by 2 or more runs.

Playing the money line on the Yankees to win would have required you to have lay $210.00, while viewing the game another way. Taking the value of the run line into account, you could have returned the same profit by laying just $130.00, assuming they win by 2 or more runs. What you have done is save $80.00 on a potential loss or win by one run.

For those wanting to know the end result .... the Yankees came away with a comfortable 6-3 victory.

Perhaps the best way in winning on the run line is to play road teams that are favored, instead of home teams. The reasoning is quite simple. The road team will always have nine innings to bat. If the home team leads by one run after 8 innings, your only chance is realistically a blown save by the home team with the game going into extra innings. Even if this occurs, the road team can conceivably score an unlimited amount of runs, while the home team theoretically needs to just score one more then the opposing team to win in extra frames.

In considering run line wagering, a couple of numbers you should know. As previously stated, about 30% of all games played since 2000 are decided by a single run. Home favorites win by one run just 18.3% of the time and road favorites win by one run at a rate of 12.1%. The upside is the largest grouping of numbers in baseball fall toward the home/road favorites winning by 2 or more runs at 41.3 percent.

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