Get a $500 Bonus on a $500 Deposit at BetUS!

Baseball Betting Picks

Written by Jimmy Boyd

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 MLB betting over the long run.

Instant Credit Card Deposits & 100% First Win Bonus!

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 baseball lines 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. Now if you want a free baseball picks trial, where you can get the best premium picks available for no cost to you, simply sign up for a new account at one of our sponsor sportsbooks and make a deposit. Tell them Locksmith Sports sent you and we’ll hook you up with our award winning baseball picks for no charge.

If you liked this article, you may also be interested in:

Written by Jimmy Boyd on July 11, 2008 · Filed Under Baseball Betting Articles

Comments

Got something to say?