Baseball Betting Strategy: Costly Habits to Avoid
Betting MLB
Bad betting habits are a losing proposition. They stick to your mental thought process and stay around to obscure your clear thinking. Keeping bad habits in perspective saves money.
“Old habits die hard” the saying goes — and how true with baseball betting systems!
Some bad baseball habits that most amateur bettors use over and over makes it impossible to win on a consistent basis. They work sometimes in your favor but are not a standard handicapping tool.
Stop betting too many favorites. Getting stuck on the favorites is a typical bad betting habit. Betting baseball favorites at -150 or -170 will deplete your bankroll over the long run. Eliminating this habit will save you a lot of juice on the moneyline. Losing baseball teams do win around 40% of their games over the long season. Top team favorites win about 60% of their games. Making money betting favorites happens in the short run when teams win 5 or 6 games in a row.
Baseball is a game of streaks. The worst teams in the league do win 3 or 4 games in a row as a nice dog. One of the biggest mistakes and a bad habit is playing the “due factor”. This habitual tendency is to bet against the winning streak to continue. Staying on a winning streak is the best way to insure profits. Bad teams can go two weeks winning 10 out of 12 games before they level off and their record stays below a 500 winning percentage.
Baseball Betting Strategy: even when top teams lose 3 in a row, do not assume they are due to win their next game.
The common bad habit of betting the favorite starting pitching too many times will fluctuate back and forth with wins and losses but cost you the moneyline juice on the favorite. The exception is learning to bet the dog with good starting pitching or take the +1.5 runs with a close pitching match-up. The starting favorite pitcher usually goes 6 innings so you need to factor in the bullpen. Great pitching can dominate but still lose a close 2 to 1 game.
The faulty habit most bettors follow is the past reputation of an aging starting pitcher who lost some of his velocity on his fastball. You need to eliminate last years performance and focus on his current form. If you have a big favorite who is struggling over his past few starts, pass on his next start.
Another costly mistake is the attraction the public feels for the high scoring team with a potent lineup. A lot of public bettors assume that scoring runs from star hitters equals wins.
People love homers and runs batted in but it does work both ways. How many times do high scoring teams put up 8 runs and lose. The betting public will bet the big name sluggers and inflate the moneyline. Smart bettors look for this type of value and bet the dog for a nice inflated line in their favor — sometimes as high as +200 (2 to 1). Good pitching beats good hitting and great lineups do get beat by effective pitching and sound defense.
One more costly habit to avoid is neglecting the home/away series that all teams go through within their division and inter-league play. Search back to the last series and those previous results will be helpful for the same teams playing each other again. If either team lost in a sweep (happens a lot), they will pay it back with a sweep of their own. Home and away series of 3 to 4 games is unique to baseball and exposes a pattern of play. Be aware of what happened in earlier match-ups. Baseball patterns are very real and are the best the best handicapping tools to utilize.
