Trends in Baseball Betting
Sports Betting
Jun 16, 2001, 16:19
By Chuck Murphy http://www.gamblingonlinemagazine.com
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It is so easy to get lost in the sea of baseball statistics that are readily available on the Internet. To be a successful baseball handicapper, you must come up with a way to organize all of the information available and use it to your advantage. Fortunately this is not as overwhelming as it first seems. Although there are an infinite number of statistics and news tidbits available online, there are some easy ways to keep all of this information in order and use it to make good bets. The key to being a successful handicapper is understanding the simple fact that the money line is a reflection of the public's perception of a game, which is usually flawed in some way. If you can do the right research you can find the games in which the line is off, and exploit that to your advantage.
One of the most crucial stats in baseball and one of the most overlooked is a measure of a team's overall power or strength. A good system for measuring one team against another is really the root of handicapping, yet it seems to get lost among all the other stats in baseball. Nobody would argue about the relative worth of pitchers without talking about the ERA's of the pitchers in question, but how often do you hear an equivalent stat mentioned for the overall performance of a team? There are a number of readily powerful indexes online, some subjective polls by baseball sites are good, or a purely statistical one such as the one used at StatBeast.com will give you a good start. If you would prefer to develop your own system for rating teams, you can make it as simple or as complex as you like. In any case it is essential that you have some base to start with and that you are consistent in using whatever system you prefer. By consistently using a system or an index you will start to notice that some good teams are cosistently underrated in the line and some bad teams are consistently overrated. This can work to your advantage.
With your power index as a base, you can now play with any number of different statistics. The most obvious place to start is with the pitchers. There are many ways to evaluate pitchers, and all have their merits. Most people use ERA as a baseline and adjust from there. The key point in evaluating a pitcher's stats is finding that piece of information, which is generally known, that can help you. Some pitchers such as Roger Clemens are very consistent, Clemens had an ERA between 3.4 and 3.8 whether he was home/away, day/night games or on grass/turf. So his overall ERA is a pretty accurate reflection of what he is likely to produce in his next game. But his teammate, Orlando Hernandez has drastically different splits. He had an ERA of 5.57 at home last year and 3.73 on the road. In day games his ERA was 6.51, yet it was only 3.51 in night games. On grass he had an ERA of 4.71 and on turf it dropped to 3.6. So handicapping El Duque's games would require a little more information than the Rocket's games.
One of the most interesting questions in regards to both teams and pitchers is, how far back should we look. If the Dodgers have won four of their last five, but they are only 14-15 for the season, should they be considered a good team or a mediocore team? Streaks represent a really interesting question for handicappers. Sometimes an otherwise mediocre team or pitcher can get hot and be absolutely dominating. John Halama came out of the gates on fire last year as he won his first six decisions before going 1-4 in June. This kind of stat is both intrigueing and scary. It is intrigueing because it is exactly what every handicapper is looking for, the hot streak that is subtle enough to not change the line drastically, but obvious enough to ride. But the scary part is knowing when to realize that the ride is over and making sure that you aren't still betting on Halama as he loses his fourth game in June, wiping out the money you made on him in May. Streaks are a very fickle and dangerous ride, but they are so easy to get caught up in because they are so fun. In the long run you are better off sticking to the basics, who is the better team and who is the better pitcher, but if you want to indulge in a few streaks, just do so responsibly.
The art in handicapping lies in finding a way to take all of the statistics you find out about a game and weighing them to come up with an accurate estimate of the chances a team has of winning. This is extremely tricky at times, especially when there is no clear pattern. When a red hot Eric Milton is facing a slumping Indians squad, what do you pay attention to? If Milton is 3-0 in his last four starts and the Indians have been slumping, does that mean you should go with the Indians? Or should you go with the fact that the Indians are the team with the winning percentage and strength of schedule rating? Some people do this in a completely mathematical way, while others prefer to do it in a way that makes sense to them. You can develop a simple scoring system which assigns a value to all of the statistics that you like to research and keep track of which ones are successful for you. You may alternatively choose to be less sytematic about it and just go with the stats that you feel are important for each individual game. Almost all successful handicappers will tell you that they have some system or variable, which they fall back on. Some prefer pitchers, some prefer team strength, and some use an equation that combines the two. In any case, you will be most sucessful if you find a system you believe in and stick with it.
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