Baseball Odds

Sports betting online experts will tell you that 2012 March Madness betting and betting on MLB games have a lot in common. There are tips you can use for betting on MLB that can apply to just about any bet you will place. But there are also things that are very specific to baseball that every baseball betting enthusiast should keep a very close eye on. When you are getting ready to bet on baseball, be sure you follow the ground rules.

Never Bet with Emotion

Just because you love the Boston Red Sox does not mean that the Red Sox will be going 162-0 this season. Remember that betting on baseball games means taking the spread into account. Even if the Red Sox have a winning season, you could still lose because Boston could not cover the spread in most of their games. You need to have a system in place for betting games based on statistics that you can read and then stick with that system when betting. Do not let your emotions get the best of you.

Start with the Pitcher

The fact that a team has a new kid that can really hit the ball is nice for newspaper headlines. But when you bet on MLB baseball, you need to start with the pitcher. You also need to read more than just the pitcher’s official record and ERA for the season. How many games did the team win when that pitcher started a game? That will be different than the official number of wins. How many runs does that pitcher really allow every time he stepped on the mound? That number will be different than the official ERA. You can find sites that track the important pitcher stats or keep them yourself as the season wears on. Serious bettors start betting baseball games at the pitcher’s mound and then work their way out to the rest of the field.

Sports betting enthusiasts are always looking for the newest system that will get them a higher winning percentage. NFL football can be a tough game to bet because determining patterns with so few games played can be difficult. The NBA and NHL offer a different kind of challenge as these contact sports can often suffer losing streaks based on injuries that seem to occur on a regular basis. But MLB baseball teams seem to be able to follow patterns more consistently. You need to be careful because MLB betting requires a very long term approach which means that teams tend to fall off or pick up pace towards the end of the season. But during the year, there are some streaks that can be cataloged and used for betting purposes.

The Superbowl betting experts work in baseball as well and they have noticed that a home team that is at .500 and is the favorite in a particular game tends to win that game at least 50 percent of the time. The team at .500 has shown that it is winning as much as it is losing and is putting together streaks of wins. Baseball teams tend to play better at home, so a team that is playing at .500 is more apt to put together a home winning streak than a road streak.

If that home team loses the first game you bet, then you may still be able to get your money back. It is very risky, but some bettors that lose a bet on the .500 home team in the first game will double up in the second game and get their money back. When bettors do this, the winning percentage is also high. But you will need to determine if the risk is worth the potential reward in this case.

Sports betting experts use a variety of stats and a range of systems to try and make the best possible MLB bets. Baseball is a game of numbers and the chances that one team will beat another is all tied up in how you perceive those numbers. There are two important statistics you should look at with baseball along with exploring other stats related to them. Those stats are a pitcher’s WHIP and the amount of runs a team scores per game.

The Superbowl betting and MLB sports experts know about the WHIP statistic while many casual bettors are unfamiliar with it. The WHIP is the measurement of walks and hits per inning pitched. It tells you how many runners a pitcher puts on base per game. The pitcher’s ERA will give you a general idea of how many of those runners tend to score. But remember that the ERA is only earned runs and disregards walks. That is why the WHIP together with the ERA can give you a good idea of how well a pitcher performs.

MLB fans love watching runs being scored. Bettors know that a team’s ability to score runs is a consistent thing. The stat that you compare to the WHIP and ERA is the average number of runs scored by a team in a game. That is computed by dividing the number of runs scored by games played. Remember to take injuries into account when using this stat. A team that has experienced a lot of injuries late in the season will not have the same scoring ability that it did when the roster was healthy.