How to bet on favourites in baseball matches?

Question

Successful baseball bettors always follow a betting strategy, I want to know, what is the effective baseball betting strategy to place a bet on favourites in baseball matches?

Answer 1

With the baseball season getting closer to beginning it’s time to get our heads back into the game and start making some coin. If you’re someone who sees a big favorite on the sportsbook and instantly want to bet on the team you’re going to need to rethink your strategy. When you lay money on a big favorite lets say -200 or more you’re laying too much money to leave room for losses.

Baseball is like no other sport in North America and teams are never dominating the league and running over every opponent. If you look at the best teams win ratio and the worst teams win ratio over the past couple season you’ll notice that there is only about a .300-.350 difference between the worst and best teams over the past couple seasons. With this in mind it’s easy to tell that the big favorites aren’t always going to win and when you’re laying -200+ you can’t afford to lose many bets.

If you look at the beginning of last year in baseball and take a look at the big favorites you’ll notice that you would have lost money if you bet on them. Out of the first fifteen games in the season last year with a big favorite of -200+ only nine of those teams won the game and six teams lost. This means if you were betting $100 on every bet you would have been down $400+. The reason you’re down money is because you only won 60% of your games and you’re laying -200+ on every one of those games.

Most bettors who see value in a heavy favorite on a given night will choose to use the run line instead of the money line. It makes it more difficult to win the bet, but you’ll be laying a lot less on each bet then you would be if you were betting on the money line. For instance, if a team is a money line favorite of -200 they might only be a -120 favorite if you bet on them with the run line. When you bet on the run line the team you bet on will need to win by -1.5 runs whereas on a money line bet the team only needs to win.

If you look at the beginning of last season again and look at the same 15 games as earlier in the article you’ll see that 7 of the teams won by the run line. So although you would have lost more then 50% of the games you’d still be done considerably less then someone betting on the money line in those games. One startling thing is that the money line and run line big favorites would have lost you money early last season whereas the normal favorites would have earned you a profit.

When you’re looking at baseball don’t look for the huge favorites just because it seems like the best bet. Always analyze each game for the night and look for the best match-up before you even go to your sportsbook to see the odds. I never recommend laying money on a big favorite on the money line and the run line I only recommend it if you have a strong feeling about the game.