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A lot of beginners who are new to making baseball betting
picks ask me how I find value in the money lines. They always
ask the keys stats that I utilize in order to pick
winners or if I even rely on statistical information
over my personal gut feelings. They want to know what is
more important: WHIP (Walks, Hits per Innings Pitched)
or ERA (Earned Run Average), Batting Average or OBP
(On-Base Percentage). My answer to these clients is that
there is no one clear path to unveil all of the answers
in the handicapping abyss. As I have said before,
handicapping is an accumulation of gathered edges and
there isn’t any can’t-miss systems. There are as many
different approaches to handicapping as there are
handicappers out there, but since we have been known to
be one of the best services at handicapping baseball, we
believe that our approach is a successful one. Some
general guidelines that we use can point a beginner in
the right direction and hopefully help them beat the
linesmakers with their baseball
picks in the long run.
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The number one thing to do in almost every single
sport right off the bat is to create your own line. Keep
from looking at the posted line until you have gathered
your stats, looked at the numbers, added in your own
personal intangibles, and set what you think the line
should be. In baseball you will want to come up with who
should be favored, the percentage of times they will win
the game, and then by using our money line chart
published in an earlier article come up with what the
money line should be for the game. This is the starting
point and without doing this, you would waste too much
time investigating games that there is no value in. In
College Football and College Basketball when there are
over 100 teams playing each Saturday, you would never be
able to put in a quality amount of time on any game if
you didn’t narrow your search from the start. As I
mentioned though, this is our starting point. The goal
here is to come up with a hypothesis. Remember what a
hypothesis is from your junior high science fair? It’s
just a well educated guess and our hypothesis is going
to be based upon just a few statistical categories.
Some of the stats that I really look into are as
follows, and remember, this is just a starting guide. We
should take into account, a team’s batting average of
course, but even more important is OBP or On-Base
Percentage. On Base Percentage is the total number of
hits, walks, and times hit by pitch by the total number
of at-bats, walks, times hit by pitch, and sacrifice
flies. I believe it’s more important to factor in how
many times a team is getting base runners in general
than just a team’s average. We should also look at how
many total bases a team has. And if we need to average
that, we just divide total bases by the number of
at-bats and come up with Slugging Percentage. Stolen
Bases and Home Runs are also important categories
because a fast team can play small ball very effectively
(think Florida Marlins) and Home Run hitting teams can
always put up runs. As far as from a pitching
standpoint, I like to look at WHIP, walks, HR allowed,
ER, and strikeouts. The high WHIP can be a killer if
it’s by a guy who isn’t a great strikeout pitcher. If a
lot of hitters are reaching base and the pitcher still
has a low ERA and low strikeout total, runners scoring
are only one step away. If the pitcher can strike a lot
of batters out, he’s better off when he gets into some
sort of a jam, because a strikeout doesn’t allow base
runners to advance. One important note about stats is
that recent performance outweighs overall performance.
The end of June is a great time to mention the Tampa Bay
Devil Rays and Texas Rangers. If you look at these
teams’ stats for the entire season, you wouldn’t be able
to tell how both teams have been on fire for the past
2-3 weeks. A team will always gravitate back to its
averages, but looking at 15 days worth of stats provides
you with a more in depth snapshot of how the team is
performing currently. Yesterday’s game may have produced
high stats, low stats, or may have been right in with
current performance, but a 15 day or 30 day snapshot
gets a nice look into how a team is doing currently,
taking into account hot and cold days. We all know teams
change over the season, which is why I do not recommend
looking at stats from a year-to-date perspective.
Once we have our general line based on stats and own
personal creativity, we can decide which games to go
deeper into by comparing our lines to the posted lines.
If some of our lines are a little bit off from the
posted lines, then we have found a few games that
probably warrant most of our attention. The difference
between winners and losers is that winners find out why
things are different and losers just accept that fact
that they are different and bet too many games. If on a
given day 5 different lines appear off by our
calculations, we are left with 5 games that we begin to
handicap in depth. It doesn’t mean we have 5 games to
have action on. The first place to start your
investigation is with the starting pitchers. Look at
their ERA’s, home and away, over the last 3 starts, and
against today’s opponent. If you think a line for a team
is too high and upon further investigation his last 3
starts have been worse than his overall performance,
this is a strong candidate for a play. Look at how many
innings a pitcher has pitched in his last 3 starts. If
he is only averaging 5 innings, and you know that team
has a worn out or terrible bullpen, that can mean
trouble for that team, especially if the opposing team
has had big bats recently. These are the accumulated
edges that we use to adjust our general line. After a
while you will start to get a feel for such things.
Keeping accurate records for each team and starter will
lead you to get a feeling for them. It’s as if you can
almost predict when your high priced pitcher is going to
have an off day, which they all do, and find value in
the opposing dog. Let’s say team A has an ace on the
mound that is a public pitcher, a big name, but in his
last two starts he threw well over 120 pitches. The
opposing team has been knocking around pitchers
recently, getting on base and getting runners into
scoring position, as well as having a pitcher who has
been putting up great numbers his last 2 or 3 starts,
who do you bet on? Me, I would take the dog here because
it’s easy for a star to have an off night after being
overworked in his previous few starts.
I hope that we gave you a general idea on how we get
started with our in-depth handicapping. Before you
really start focusing on which teams to delve deep into
on a given day, you have to start with a predicted line
and compare it to the lines makers posted line. You
should have a general idea on how our team at Locksmith
Sports gets started and it should help you quickly
eliminate a few matchups each and every day.
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