Using Statistics for Baseball Betting
If you enjoy doing research and analysis as a part of your sports betting, there’s no better sport for you than baseball. The amount of statistics available for baseball gamblers, oddsmakers and fans alike is simply staggering. It’s easy to get lost in the sea of numbers with no idea what to look for.
Believe it or not, all of these numbers actually make it easier to make a profit by betting on baseball – at least if you know what to look for. While the general public might use statistics when thinking about baseball, the numbers they use tend to be at best only somewhat helpful, and at worst, downright misleading. In this article, we’re going to take a look at a couple numbers the public looks at when evaluating teams and players, and what you should use instead.
Baseball Statistics Used by the Public
When looking at teams, the public’s main gauge is the team’s record, which makes perfect sense, since in the end, that’s all that matters when it comes to how successful the team has been. If a team has a better record, then they’re likely a better team.
For hitters, the most popular statistics are the traditional ones: batting average (AVG), home runs (HR) and runs batted in (RBI). These numbers give an indication of how often a player or team will put the ball into play, and how much power they have. When it comes to pitchers, most people look at win-loss record and earned run average (ERA), which lets them know how often a team wins with that pitcher on the mound, and how many runs they tend to give up.
Statistics You Should Use for Baseball Betting
All of the statistics in the public section are very traditional, and none of them are completely useless. However, in the modern era of baseball, sabermetrics have provided us with many much more precise ways of understanding which teams and players are the best.
For instance, when evaluating teams, it’s important to look beyond their record. We want to know how many runs the team has scored and how many they’ve allowed. These numbers are also often expressed as a Pythagorean Record, which uses those numbers to come up with the record the team “should” have based on their runs scored vs. runs allowed. Over time, a team will tend to perform close to their Pythagorean Record, even if they’re doing better or worse over the short run.
For team hitting, batting average has the weakness of ignoring walks, while home runs are only one aspect of power hitting. Instead, when evaluating a team’s ability to hit, you should look at on base percentage (OBP) and slugging percentage (SLG), which correlate very closely to runs scored. A team that gets on base and hits the ball hard will score runs going forward, even if they’ve been unlucky so far. You should also look at a team’s numbers vs. lefties and righties; some teams do vastly different depending on which side the pitcher is throwing from.
Speaking of pitchers, you can just about ignore their win-loss record, since that doesn’t tell us anything about how well the pitcher has been throwing – a lot of their record is dependent on whether they’ve gotten enough run support in their starts. Look instead at how many baserunners they’re allowing per inning (WHIP), as well as their ERA. If you want to do a little more research, there are more advanced forms of ERA (like Component ERA) that strip away some of the luck that effects ERA and tend to better predict future performance.
Using these advanced statistics will give a baseball bettor more insight into which teams, pitchers and players are really the best bets to perform well. This knowledge is something the average casual gambler doesn’t have, meaning it’s a great way to get an advantage over them – and the lines the bookmakers set with them in mind.
