Handicapping Baseball Games

The art of handicapping sporting events requires a mix of data collection, statistical analysis, intuition, and luck. The end goal is to accurately predict the most likely result by determining the probability of either side winning.

Once you’ve assigned a percentage of likelihood to each side of the bet, you compare those values to the implied probability calculated from the odds. If you believe the chance of an outcome happening is higher than what’s suggested by the line, that bet has value.

The best handicappers analyze vast sets of data and statistics, searching for patterns or trends that strongly correlate to winning or losing games. Next, they build models based on all of the factors deemed relevant, ranking some variables above others.

The work is never done, and the information is continuously under scrutiny; more statistics are introduced into the equation, while others are thrown out or weighted differently, all in the hopes of building more and more accurate predictions.

Baseball handicapping works the same way. What makes this sport unique is the wealth of data collected as part of the game, the advanced analytics movement already underway in the MLB, the numerous independent variables which all influence the results, and the enormous impact one position – the starting pitcher – has over all the others. To successfully handicap baseball, you’ll need to research a wide variety of factors and then consider how they’ll interact as the contest plays out.

There’s no set statistical model we can give you to make accurate predictions and win all of your bets. We can, however, give you some insight into the process the top sports gamblers use. Furthermore, we’ll share many of the most important variables to keep in mind when making your picks. How much time and effort you put into cultivating this data is ultimately up to you.

To bet like a pro, you’ll create tables and spreadsheets that automatically collect the desired data and run it through your analytics models. For everybody else, these things should just be considered when deciding which sides to wager.

Then, when you’re comfortable with the topics on this page and ready to place your wagers, just make sure you’re selecting strong sites for your sports betting needs.

Regression analysis is a statistical process that involves studying independent variables in an effort to find how they correlate with a dependent variable which is, in this case, baseball wins. When using these processes to handicap baseball, this consists of digging through large datasets trying to identify individual statistics or factors that result in winning baseball. You can get as specific and sophisticated as you can imagine, breaking the game down to the smallest moments in an effort to discover an angle that gives you an edge over the sportsbooks and betting public.

See? These can get as specific as you want; it’s just a trial and error process of playing around with different sets of data.

Luckily, data is easy to come by when dealing with baseball. There are numerous websites dedicated to hosting baseball statistical data sets, including sabermetrics like what was used by Billy Beane to create Moneyball.

A reliable place to begin your handicapping is with home and away records. You want to see how players have performed in their recent outings at their home stadium and how they recently played on the road. You should consider looking at these numbers for both the pitching and hitting.

Furthermore, don’t just look at wins and losses. While that data may give you something to work with, it probably won’t tell the entire story. Try to find trends or patterns that provide insight into the differences in performances. Did all the left-handed batters do better in the home stadium, and was that the push the team needed to win? Were the road losses all in hitter-friendly stadiums during day games?

Anything you can find will add value to your predictions.

You’ll also want to know the type of thrower each pitcher is that’s starting in the games you’re considering betting. There are power pitchers that smoke guys with their fastball. There are ground-ball and fly-ball pitchers who give up lots of contact but get tons of quick outs in the process. Then you have your knuckleballers and off-speed specialists.

Alone, this information doesn’t mean much. There aren’t correlations between pitching style and winning baseball games. Actually, there are winning and losing pitchers that would fit into any of these classifications. However, this info will be vital when considered in combination with things like the umpire’s strike zone tendencies, the park, and the batting lineup’s strengths and weaknesses.

Starting pitchers are undoubtedly the most significant role in all of baseball. They have the ball in their hands every single defensive play and carry the bulk of the responsibility as it pertains to wins and losses. However, it’s also almost exclusively what the casual gambling public bases their picks on.

For this reason, the starting pitcher often becomes overvalued. With so many other crucial factors going ignored in favor of marquee names and win-loss records, it’s common to see lines move in a way that’s ideal for any handicapper paying attention. That’s why games against stud starting pitchers often present the most value for bettors looking to wager the moneyline on underdogs.

To accurately predict how things will play out, you’re going to need to know the actors involved. That means knowing who will actually be participating in the contest. You’ll need to pay attention to the news leading up to the game for injury news, but there are some clues you can gather from recent matchups.

While starting pitching largely determines the betting odds, they rarely throw for the complete game. So you’ll want to know how available the bullpen will be, particularly the closer. If the squad recently played two or three games, and the closer pitched in all of them, he may not be able to throw in the next one. How critical is he to their game plan? How rested are the rest of the relievers?

You also want to be on top of the most up-to-date injury news. To make an accurate prediction, you’ll need to know which athletes are playing, who’s playing hurt, and who is out of action.

The MLB season is a long, grinding marathon. With 182 regular-season games per year, a team’s best players will periodically have to take contests off for rest. Unfortunately, the managers don’t release the lineups until shortly before game time. Regardless, you should do your best to find out who’s playing and who isn’t before betting.

A team’s recent road schedule and the accompanying travel demands have also been shown to play significant roles in performance. The longer a road trip drags on, the longer a team is forced to stay away from their family, their comfort zone, and their daily routines, which can lower morale, energy, and focus. Without that time to relax and recharge the batteries, each subsequent game takes a toll on the players’ psyches.

There’s also scientific evidence that jet lag can drastically lower athletic performance for several days after traveling. This hits teams flying eastward from the west coast the hardest. This is due to the circadian rhythm, the body’s natural clock. While on the west coast, the body adapts to the time zone. Once the athletes fly back home, the time difference has them playing games when their body wants to be sleeping.

In fact, a study conducted by Northwest University showed a marked decline in teams returning home in the east after an extended westward road trip. For each time zone they were forced to pass through on the road back home, the players required an additional 24 hours of recovery before returning to their baseline levels of performance.

Weather conditions are one of the many environmental factors that influence the type of game that’s played. Combined with the park factors and the home plate umpire’s tendencies, you can get a pretty clear idea of what kind of game it will be without even looking at the two teams. Cold weather games tend to be lower-scoring, as the ball doesn’t travel as far when it’s hit into the air.

When the temperature is warmer, shots fly further. This is doubly true if the humidity levels are high as well. Wind varies in how it affects the contest. Depending on the dimensions of the park and the direction it faces, gusts may help carry fly balls those extra feet necessary to become a home run. They may also act as resistance, turning would-be homers into outs on the warning track.

Rain can also shift the balance of power in a matchup. A team’s starting pitcher can be sabotaged by rain delays that get them out of rhythm and cool off their shoulder. Having to take unexpected breaks mid-game, warming up, then stopping, then warming up again can ruin an ace’s focus and mental preparation just as much as it can limit them physically.

Baseball is a game of streaks. It’s such a mentally taxing sport, requiring a high degree of concentration and a short memory since even the greatest players in history fail roughly seven out of every ten trips to the plate. It’s also a game full of superstitions and unwritten rules that the players believe in whole-heartedly.

That’s why it’s never a good idea to bet against streaks. If a team is on a winning streak, don’t bother trying to determine when it will come to an end because they’re “due.” You will win more often betting with the streak, whether it’s a series of wins in a row or losses. When a squad is riding high, feeling confident and unbeatable, they nearly are a lot of the time. And when a club gets down, feeling snake-bitten, that becomes true as well.

Handicapping isn’t always strictly about the individual contests. It takes into account every trend, pattern, and stat possible to predict an outcome. Whatever the psychological phenomenon is that pushes teams into consecutive wins or losses may not be known, but the math has shown betting with momentum is more fruitful than going against it, on average.

The location of a matchup is particularly crucial when handicapping baseball because it’s the one sport that allows some variety with regards to the dimensions of the field of play. The MLB rules and regulations allow teams to be able to get creative with the shape of their outfield, the distances from home plate, the heights of the outfield walls, and even unique details like the hill in straightaway center field that used to exist in Houston’s Minute Maid Park.

Sometimes the shape of the outfield and the various accompanying walls and obstacles can create a wind tunnel. When batters drive the ball to a specific part of the field, these gusts can carry the shot over the wall. If that’s the case, your job as a handicapper is to see how frequently players on each team hit the ball in that direction.

The home plate umpire’s strike zone can be the single most influential factor in a contest at times. Umpire statistics are tracked because how they usually call balls and strikes will ultimately decide how the game is played. An ump with a smaller strike zone will result in high-scoring games that favor the hitting. If the pitchers have more space with which to work, the batters will be chasing all night, leading to more strikeouts and fewer runs.

If you do nothing else, just research the umpire’s statistics and the style of both starting pitchers. A pitcher that relies on off-speed stuff and attacking the edges of the plate can be derailed entirely by a small strike zone. They’ll start the game with lots of balls and walks and will be forced to serve up strikes to be blasted by the offense eventually.

That same pitching style combined with a different umpire might make the man on the mound look like an absolute maestro. If given the opportunity to paint the edges of a larger area, they can play to their strengths and leave hitters baffled. There’s almost nothing more vital to your gambling success in baseball than how the pitchers match up with the officiating.

During the marathon season, it’s common for teams to occasionally lose focus or inspiration for stretches of games or a series here or there. The human brain can only stay locked on for so long before emotional fatigue sets in. So, finding situations in which one team has added motivation or something to prove can be a fantastic advantage.

One such scenario is when a club is facing an opponent that beat them previously either in a hard-fought game that hurt to lose or in an embarrassing fashion. You want to bet on the side with revenge on their minds. This may also apply if there was a scuffle in the earlier showdowns or some sort of controversy. What’s important is that one side is entering the game with the need to right past wrongs; that’s the mindset that brings out impressive performances.

Similarly, a squad coming off a double-digit loss in their previous game will be extra motivated to turn things around. Historically, teams looking to get back on track after a one-sided drubbing outperform their expectations. Handicappers will often use this opportunity to bet the “over” for total runs. The underdog doesn’t always bounce back by winning the next contest, but they regularly keep things competitive and outscore the totals line.

When a club loses their previous matchup despite being a heavy favorite, they’ll usually win the second game. There was a reason they were favored initially, and that’s generally because they have the better team. A loss to an inferior opponent can be the perfect wake-up call to rally behind.

Licking their wounds and wholly focused on playing up to their potential, these heavily-favored teams dominate the second attempt regularly. Plus, the betting public, which is typically affected by recency bias, will most likely bet on the underdog winning again, ensuring a better price for the intelligent handicappers.

How does each side prefer to play? What are they good at? The answers to these questions are a critical piece of the overall puzzle when predicting a game. You should know how each team’s games look both when they win and lose. These strengths and weaknesses will be what you’re considering when deciding how the park, ump, and other aspects will make their mark.

Don’t just look at their average runs scored or the starting pitching rotation. Analyze what kind of pitchers they play well against and who gives them trouble. In what kind of parks do they have the most success? Can their pitching staff win close games frequently, or do they require lots of run support? How does that information mix with the park, weather, ump, and opponent?

When analyzing data, a common mistake is to overly emphasize season-long statistics. While those figures do have their value and are worth looking over, it’s the most recent performances that should be noted.

When making determinations based on recent hitting numbers, take the values from the last five games and weigh them more heavily. Like we discussed earlier, baseball is a streaky game. A lineup that’s been producing more runs than their averages lately may be a sneaky wager, especially if the rest of the market is focused on year-long numbers.

For recent pitching performances, just take the last two or three starts into account. Study how many pitches the bullpen has thrown over the last few contests. Tired bullpens lead to blown leads and totals bets that go “over.” It’s also suggested that you only consider the most recent outings when judging a starting pitcher’s next matchup. You need to know how they’re doing right now, not a month ago or last year.

What is each team playing for? If this is a run-of-the-mill regular-season game, the stakes may not be too high. Study the context surrounding the game you’re handicapping. Are the two sides division rivals? Is future playoff positioning on the line?

Ideally, for betting, you can find matchups in which the underdog has more to play for than the favorite. Maybe they are still battling for a wild card spot, while their opponent already has the playoffs clinched. Or one squad might be purposely tanking for top draft picks, as the Astros did for four years before rebuilding a powerhouse.

Once you’ve done all of your research and considered the many factors involved in a game, it’s time to go line shopping. Sports gambling success is often decided by extremely slim margins. The difference between profitability and losing money long term can be a few points here and there. Don’t just handicap the game and bet on whoever you think will win; you have to find value.

If you are betting favorites, you shouldn’t risk wagering on a side laying more than -160. That means you have to stake $160 just to win $100. Rather than risk so much for such a small return, you’re better off betting the run line and grabbing better odds. That way, you take the favorite but get underdog odds. It’s reasonable to expect a -160 favorite to win by two or more runs.

More advanced handicappers then use databases, tables, and analytical models to analyze all of the data collected and the variables discussed in this article. They can adjust the weight given to each statistic and manipulate the data sets to help them study how all of the different influences affect the outcome of games and to what extent.

Once they’ve built reliable models, professional gamblers will run millions of simulations of the upcoming contest. After inputting all of the variables, the computer will “play” the game over and over under the exact same conditions. It will then provide an analysis of all the many possibilities, including which outcomes occurred most frequently.

The handicappers then use this information for their real probabilities. They know that if these two sides played one million times, Team A would win 60% of the time, while Team B would win 40%. These values are then compared to the odds being offered and the implied probability to determine the right bet.

The betting odds can be converted into a percentage form, which is the implied probability of the wager. This percentage represents how likely that side of the bet is to win, according to the odds. If the actual likelihood of an outcome happening (calculated by the statistical models) is higher than the implied probability, that bet has positive value. Good handicappers only buy prices with positive value.

As summer ends, Major League Baseball transitions to the high-stakes post-season, where every pitch matters. The playoffs differ significantly from the regular season. The stakes are incredibly high with single-elimination Wild Card rounds and intense best-of-seven series. This makes gambling on the MLB playoffs feel significantly different than your average regular-season betting.

There are numerous factors that change once the road to the World Series has begun. Players are fully engaged however, they are under immense pressure, with memorable moments defining careers and teams’ fates. In some ways, knowing that clubs will be playing all of their best talents and that those players will all be giving maximum effort to win makes gambling on playoff baseball even easier, predicting which players will thrive under pressure can be challenging. Understanding these differences is crucial for successful betting during the MLB playoffs.

That’s why, in this section, we’ll be looking into many of the variables that make MLB playoffs betting different than the regular season. We will also examine some of the most crucial elements in determining a series and share why you should have them in mind when wagering at baseball betting sites.

The pressure on athletes in playoff baseball games is immense, with every pitch and swing scrutinized under bright lights. The impact of this pressure can have dramatic effects on players, positively or negatively. In contrast, regular-season games have lower stakes and rarely determine the outcome of the year.

When handicapping playoff matchups, it’s important to consider players’ previous experiences and whether their performance increases or decreases in high-pressure situations. The strategies employed by managers also change in the playoffs, with teams willing to take more risks and use starting pitchers in relief. Handicappers can solely focus on the data that influences the upcoming contest without worrying about external factors like rest or let-down games.

Another variable you must consider when betting on playoff games that you don’t worry as much about in the regular season are the teams’ experience levels. During the summer months, younger players have the luxury of time to acclimate to the big leagues and catch up to the pitching. This is not the case in the playoffs when clubs need their best performers on the field playing up to expectations.

A lot of the time, more experienced players have an easier time adjusting to the more intense post-season. For this reason, it’s worth your time to see how many contributors each squad has that have contributed to successful playoff teams before. Their experience will help calm the rest of the roster and keep them prepared.

Young players may have the pop and stamina to turn heads in the regular season, but in the fall, players that have been there before are key.

In MLB regular season betting, the focus is primarily on the starting pitcher, with some consideration given to the bullpen and closer. However, in the playoffs, the emphasis on pitching depth becomes much more pronounced. Managers make drastic substitutions and utilize their best pitchers more frequently, adding depth to the bullpen and maximizing their talent on the mound.

When handicapping playoff games, it’s crucial to consider the entire pitching staff, as multiple players may take the mound unexpectedly. Closers play a vital role in the playoffs, where games are often decided by slim margins. Make relief pitching, and closers in particular, a much more substantial portion of your handicapping in the fall.

A team’s performance in the post-season is heavily influenced by how they enter that phase. Clubs fighting for a playoff spot are less rested and can’t strategically save their pitchers for optimal strength in the series. On the other hand, teams that have been battle-hardened by playing meaningful games before the playoffs are already in the required mindset. Positive momentum from securing a playoff spot late in the season can fuel deep runs.

However, teams that secure their spot early and focus too much on resting can become rusty and out of rhythm. Pay attention to who is playing their best baseball at the end of the season. That’s who you want to bet heavily on as the rounds progress!

In the post-season, how teams match up against one another is much more pronounced than in the earlier months. The level of scouting and preparing done is greatly increased, as there are no other upcoming opponents to worry about or more pressing matters than advancing past the current round. Teams have in-depth analytics on every player they’ll face and will work hard to exploit their weaknesses.

A team that relies on lots of contact and getting players into scoring position before sequentially moving them over may work well all year, but against a team with a top-flight pitching rotation, where hits are hard to come by, their style may be their undoing. You need some power and quick runs in the lineup as well to face those aces. A team that’s all power may find themselves in dire straits should they be forced to play in a pitcher’s park. It all just depends on stylistic matchups and which team can gain the more significant advantage.

In the playoffs, the versatility of a team’s offense is much more critical than during the summer. They should be able to produce runs by hitting into the gaps as well as hitting for power. A solid side should also be able to bat effectively from either side of the plate. Similarly, they’ll need a pitching staff with a good mix of righties and lefties so that they have the personnel to deal with most situations they’ll potentially face.

During the regular season, these factors aren’t quite as important. The clubs are more likely to play their typical lineups while resting players and sticking to what they do best. It’s more about what they do and less about thwarting the opposition and game planning against them. For that reason, versatility means much less earlier in the year than it does in the playoffs.

When handicapping the regular season, we also talk about being mindful of winning and losing streaks. They’re an inevitable part of a 162-game season. But in the playoffs, you want to place more emphasis on the emotional well-being of the two sides. Baseball is very much a mental game, so the players’ mindsets are a crucial piece of the overall equation.

That’s why in the playoffs you should be more considerate of the athletes’ mental status. Obviously, you aren’t in the clubhouse, so there’s only so much information available, but you can judge their emotions somewhat based on the previous contests.

Baseball handicapping is the collection and analysis of information related to the outcome of a game. While on the surface it may seem that baseball is merely a competition between the pitchers and batters, there are actually many more contributing factors that dictate what happens. In this sport, the environment plays a crucial role, as does the umpire crew, the stylistic matchups, and each team’s recent travel arrangements.

To find success through betting on baseball games, you must identify as many essential variables as possible and try to calculate how they will all mix to create a final result. This can be as simple as comparing a team’s strengths with the ballpark, the anticipated strike zone, and the opponent’s tendencies and as complex as advanced statistical analytics algorithms. The more time and effort you put in, the more you get out.

Once you’re done researching and comfortable with your prediction, it’s time to shop for lines to ensure you only wager when there’s positive value. The more accurate your handicapping, the easier these last steps become. While it’s not imperative that you immediately learn how to break down a game and calculate hundreds of independent variables, it is advised that you start thinking about sports gambling in the way we’ve laid out in this article.

It probably seems intimidating at first, or like too much work, but these same principles can be used in a toned-down form. If you do nothing else but analyze recent innings pitched by the bullpens, starting pitcher strengths and styles, the weather, park factors, and umpire stats, you will be much further ahead than the vast majority of gamblers. All you need is an edge on the public, some decent timing, an understanding of value, and a little luck, and you’ll be well on your way to home run profits.