I love baseball and baseball betting. For me it is the only really profitable sport to bet because I feel I can quantify it and realize when a line is off. I make my own lines and when mine and the books don't jive I feel I have an edge.

Baseball moneyline betting has nothing to do with who you think will win. It all comes down to whether the line is correct or not. The beauty of baseball is that there are so many games you can get a good baseline to go off of while there is still plenty of season left.

I use a pretty simplistic big picture approach. My main question is "how often does it happen?". My next question is "does the line equate to how often it happens?". If the line doesn't reflect how often it happens I most likely have a wager. Basically I am looking at team records, runs scored, runs allowed and starting pitching. Although starting pitching has lost relevance in recent years. There are a handful of "ace" starters who will skew the line but most starters are irrelevant and typically only go 5 or 6 innings at best. Bullpens are more important than ever. But I believe a big picture approach (team record) is the most important statistic there is and all encompassing. If you are getting lost in the weeds of sabermetric analysis more power to you! Although that is a good way to play fantasy or DFS I have trouble quantifying that sort of thing when it comes down to betting. Too many moving parts. How often they win or lose is much more informative and covers all of the gray areas and intangibles.

Most really good teams only win about 60% of the time and the bad teams still win at about 40% of the time. There are lots of games and lots of variance. Big name teams (ie Yankees) often get way over bet skewing their line while small market teams (ie Kansas City) get under bet skewing their line the other way.

Coming off of a strange shortened season makes the early going tougher this year but should still offer some edges early on to play small to medium. I won't get serious until we have about 5 or 6 weeks of season in the books.

I like moneylines and runlines. In fact I find runlines often offer the most edge because the general public understands them even less that they understand the moneyline. I don't really do totals because I find them more difficult to quantify.

Baseball betting isn't about picking winners it's about finding lines that are off compared to how often it actually happens. If you understand what the line should be you will be able to spot these.

I will be doing some line shopping tomorrow for opening day but here are a few early lines that jumped off of the page at me.

Toronto +160
Baltimore +150
Milwaukee -103
Atlanta -113
Chicago (WS) -120
Oakland -103

Haven't even seen any runlines yet? But as I look though few books tomorrow I will decide exactly what I will play.

Good luck and have a profitable and enjoyable baseball season!

No offense, mrbaseball, but this reads like just about the squarest post imaginable. If you actually continue posting picks throughout the season and log a few hundred bets, I'm quite confident you'll lose. Best of luck though, and I'll be pleasantly surprised to eat crow if you're up come October.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion But I have been quite successful at baseball betting for the past few decades. I don't plan on posting daily picks but I would like to get involved intelligent baseball betting discussions.

I have no interest in guys listing picks with no reason or analysis given. I know exactly why I make every bet I make and can quantify them mathematically. Take the first game on my list Toronto +160 vs. Yankees. Toronto may lose but betting them at +160 is a huge edge. The Yankees get over bet. With Cole pitching? Even more over bet!

What did these 2 teams do last season? Yankees 33-27 while Toronto was 32-28. Seems pretty close to me. What about when Cole starts? Including post season they were 10-6. On the other side with Ryu starting the Jays were 10-4. Is Cole that much better? The eras and whips are pretty close. Yankees won the one game Cole started against the Jays but the Jays won both games Ryu started against the Yankees.

So why are the Yankees a big favorite? This game is basically a coin flip that pays +160. I like coinflips that pay +160 This kind of edge can accumulate nicely over the course of a baseball season!

while this is mostly true, the reason why the first post is so cringe imo is because the majority of it is applicable to any sport and not just baseball while he's making it seem otherwise

guys, it's this attitude which is specifically why this forum is dying

the professionals don't want to share information, which is understandable, but then they attack the amateurs willing to post about their ideas and it just leads to silence

i totally get disagreeing but why not do so productively and suggest where you think he should focus?

There's more discussion on this post than it even deserves. Would it be better for the forum to just ignore it? Surely that would make the forum die faster.

Most of the good pieces of info on this forum historically have come from flame wars or, at best, derisive posts.

fair enough,

mr baseball i'm in no position to be giving advice myself but there's a bunch of very old posts here talking about statistical models

but in general, betting game results is going to be really tough, you're more likely to succeed applying same information in the prop market, ie do you think x pitcher will get y ks etc

Like I said I have successfully bet baseball for decades. I was one of the most active regulars in this forum back when it first started. We had more than a few very good discussions back in the day.

But no skin off of my balls. I haven't posted here in years and can easily continue not posting here for years. Good luck to you all! I like intelligent discussion and it appears there will be none here.

So for discussion; everything you mentioned that you base your picks on is information that is widely available. What makes you think the bookmakers have not factored all this into the lines?

Every possible baseball statistic is widely available. So what is your point? The bookmaker is looking for a balanced line based on betting patterns which doesn't always mean a fair line. Public perception skews lines greatly and public perception is often wrong.

Sry, let me rephrase it then. The stuff you look at is exactly what the public, who by your own admission is often wrong, is also basing their bets on, so it will be tough to get an edge that way. I agree though with the concept of fading the public in some instances.

I disagree that what I look at is what the public looks at. I use spreadsheets using many (yet simple) factors in calculating what the fair line should be to the penny. The public isn't doing this. They are looking at the matchup and saying "woo hoo Yankees with Cole pitching can't lose!" and bet the Yankees up to ridiculous levels in what is a coinflip game.

With such wildly off lines and 2430 games a year plus playoffs, how have you not become the market after decades of crushing the market?

You mentioned that you think TOR vs NYY is "basically a coin flip", implying that you think the fair line on TOR should be around +100; thus you gladly took the +160 odds on TOR. If you are willing to, please include what you have determined as the fair line for all bets you post. I take a strict quantitative approach myself and thus am always curious what someone has determined the fair line of a matchup to be.

this, am curious what bet sizing ur using mrbaseball if u think Jays are 50%, 18.75% fully kelly YOLO?!?

I am far from the expert of some of the guys here, specifically when it comes to model building and such, but - in the heart of having constructive discussion on the matter - was a little flabbergasted at your notion of this game being a coin flip, due to reasons such as "well, Cole and Ryu had similar numbers last year."

Last year, Ryu was 3-2 on the road with a 3.16 ERA. Cole in Yankee Stadium was 4-1 with a 2.09 ERA.

Ryu has a lifetime BAA of .271 against the Yanks line-up he is likely to see tomorrow (quick math, you can double-check that). Cole lifetime .187 against the Blue Jays roster.

Ryu has also only been to Yankee Stadium once - in 2013 against a team that deployed Vernon Wells and Thomas Neal as the 4-5. While Ryu pitched solid, it was a long time ago and those that follow baseball know that Yankee Stadium is a different beast. Specifically tomorrow when their is 15+ MPH wind gusts going towards the short porch in right and he has to face Aaron Judge, Gary Sanchez, and Giancarlo Stanton, the former two Ryu has already given up homers to despite only seven plate appearances against the two combined.

Also - and this data could be wrong as I have only been looking at ESPN PickCenter this month once Sports Insights stopped working for free and realizing ESPN+ had something of this nature - the Yankees are getting only 53% of the bets.

Without to far into the weeds I will try to explain my process. First I just do a baseline based off of team a winning % versus team b winning %. This is the base that I weigh heaviest and then will add in other factors to calculate my final line.

The base formula is:
A = Team A wining %
B = Team B winning %
A*(1-B)/[A*(1-B)++B*(1-A)]
This gives the percentage that team A will beat team B which can easily be converted into a moneyline.

I also run similar calculations based on team records when starters A or B start. I will factor in road vs home (although I find this mostly meaningless) and handedness. Meaning does one team over or underperform against the handedness of the starting pitcher. I find most pitcher vs. batter stats samples to be too small but will peruse them.

Once I do all of this stuff I come up with what I expect the fair line to be. Sometimes it's right on and sometimes it's way off. When it is way off I bet it.

You are correct. Baseball is just about how often teams win/lose. And how do we predict that? Well, teams that score/allow more runs tend to win/lose more. And how do we predict that? Well, back in the 70's Bill James developed a Runs Created formula that involves SLG and OBP that is more accurate at predicting future runs scored than actual runs scored. And how do we predict SLG and OBP? What about other contributing factors such as defense and base running? And so it goes. Fractals. The game within the game.

Well my approach is not to predict anything! I am not predicting that TOR will beat NYY but I do think they have a better chance than the line says. I look for bad line prices based on past results. I have found it to work more often than not. Baseball has a lot of variance but the bottom line is that the lower half of teams aren't all that bad and the top half teams aren't all that good. Especially once you get away from #1 type starting pitchers.

My approach works for me and fully understand it doesn't work for everyone. If you want to swim in the swamp of sabermetrics have at it. I find that stuff very useful for fantasy and DFS but not so much when trying to quantify if todays line is right or not.

I haven't done much modeling of MLB full game moneylines since 2016 but at the time I did enjoy tinkering with the baseball models described in Peta's "Trading Bases" and Feustel's "Conquering Risk."

Always curious to see how other approaches perform too. Have at it, and please keep us updated.

OP, have you considered expanding your approach to other sports? If your approach works for baseball, it should work for other sports, particularly as you don't need to adjust for the impact of starting pitchers. Just plug in your win rates and rake in the cash.

Being hot and seeing the ball well is a thing. Smash bets on players and their teams doing well.


Source: Sammy Sosa in certain times during the 90's when I played fantasy.

Football doesn't have enough games and changes too much year to year. I have considered hockey. I hate basketball. But baseball has that sweet 162 game season where you can actually get statistically significant data. Plus I like baseball and it really interests me where I don't have to attachment in the other sports even though I am a huge hockey and football fan.

surely you're crushing every single baseball league worldwide then and not just MLB. in b4 those opening day picks get smoked

Are you up for changing some ideas in private?