March Madness
is done for another year and the NBA playoffs are still a few days away, so
baseball is the hot topic unless you live in places like Montreal,
where hockey dominates the scene, or Milwaukee, where everyone is
trying to figure out what has happened to the Bucks. At least Detroit
has the Red Wings to make them forget about the Tigers. It can't be very often
that a city's hockey team gets more wins than the baseball team, but the Red
Wings have 51 and are poised for 16 more, and that might be too much for the
Tigers to hope for this season.
Last week I
talked a little about the basics of baseball. This article was to be about
winning systems for baseball but while asking around, I received some
surprising answers. It seems that either nobody has a simple system that
works, or they are guarding it like it was gold in Fort Knox. Betting baseball
is more of a black art, where coming up with the winning pick means
understanding what determines a line and finding opportunities to take
advantage of it. So, the first question that begs to be asked is "What
determines a baseball line?"
Lets start with the book manager's opinion. BoDog's top guy, Kent, states that
it starts with pitching. "The pitchers are the only individuals
involved in every play, so you have to make them the biggest factor in
determining a game's line. Barry Bonds might be involved in just four at-bats
and a couple of plays in the field but Randy Johnson pitches to as many as
40 guys in a single game. It's easy to see where to start the research."
This opinion seems to be backed by every handicapper and player I talked to,
but it was the difference in how to use this information that is most
interesting.
There are
two schools of thought when it comes to analyzing a baseball line. One
says that pitching is so important in determining the line, that to win bets,
one must also analyze the pitching. Cincinnati Kid and Tom
Freese (from www.playbook.com) are
both great baseball handicappers and both rely heavily on pitching analysis.
They analyze the starters numbers for recent starts and then look to the
bullpens before even looking at offensive numbers. John Ambrosio (of
www.sportsrumble.com) is another
talent at picking winners, and he was kind enough to talk to me at length
about baseball today. John agrees baseball outcomes rely 80% on pitching
and 20% on batting, and that is how he approaches the games. He looks at
the starters' last 10 starts, and then the offense's last 5 games. Greg P. of
Tucson, AZ is BoDog's winningest baseball bettor this month and he also
subscribes to the pitching analysis theory. "When doing your homework the
night before, the only thing you can count on is the starting pitcher. Big
hitters often get days off with no notice, and if you put too much stock into
hitting while doing research, you may be disappointed frequently. By using
listed pitchers to my advantage, I am rarely surprised in a bad way."
The other
school of thought states that because pitching is so analyzed by book managers
in determining the line, that there is not much you can do to improve upon it.
Where you can improve upon the line is in the analysis of the offence.
Bryan Leonard (who runs
www.footballwinners.com) told me: "The linesmaker has already taken into
account the starting pitchers. Most value is obtained by looking at offensive
statistics. I use an LSLR model (least squares linear regression) to break
down a team's offensive stats. That in turn shows me how an overall offense is
performing." Bryan is currently ranked #2 by
www.thesportsmonitor.com, and
may be making a few readers wish they had stayed awake during their university
Statistics courses. Big Al McMordie (www.bigal.com)
was ranked #1 by The Sports Monitor for baseball in 2001, and agrees with
Bryan that pitching analysis is built into the line. Big Al looks more for
emotional factors that will influence performance, and has proven to be
very effective at doing so.
Both schools of
thought make sense, both require discipline and both require good analysis
skills. The answer to the question of which is more important ultimately rests
in which analysis you are most comfortable with. I recommend doing both with
pencil and paper, and seeing what works best for you. Sparky Anderson once
said, "good pitching beats good hitting" and it is up to you to figure out
where the "good pitching" and "good hitting" is.
Next up, I'll
talk about betting favorites vs. betting underdogs, and the math involved in
each. I will also talk more with Kent about how the baseball season is going
for the house and take a peek at the NHL/NBA playoffs.
