MLB April Refresher – The Importance of Siding with Trends

The Major League Baseball season can quickly grow or deplete a bankroll. The 162-game marathon lends itself to many opportunities for large successes or large failures because a schedule of that size is bound to contain many patterns or trends.

Be on the right side of these patterns and you will quickly rack up winnings. Be on the wrong side and your baseball betting season could be over in a heartbeat.

For example, home underdogs have fared well in the opening week-and-a-half of the 2019 season, winning 53.7% of their games. A $100 per game bettor would be up over $860 just by betting home dogs through the first 41 MLB games.

Trends are fickle things, however. The same exact bettor in April of 2017 would have lost over $1,300. It is more vital in baseball than any other sport to be on the good side of trends in the data because they appear more often and last for longer.

Using Killersports.com and their SDQL tool, I was able to look at some of the recent trends that have rewarded bettors handsomely. Take a look.

Home Dogs Remaining Hot

Over the past three seasons, home underdogs have played remarkably well following an offensive explosion of at least ten runs. Bettors backing these dogs have cashed in a nice paycheck the past few years.

If you followed this trend since 2016, congratulations! You won 46.4% of your 138 plays, netting nearly $800 in profit over 3 seasons. Not bad at all for $100/game.

Anti-Trap Game?

We hear about it all the time in college football – good teams are often susceptible to trap games. Trap game form when you have a big matchup the following week that preoccupies your thoughts and causes you to lose to a team you shouldn’t.

Playing every day seems to negate this psychological effect as you never hear an MLB game described as a trap game.. Interestingly enough, the numbers seem to indicate that MLB teams actually play better when a key opponent is up next on the schedule.

Since 2014, favorites off a win who still have one more game against a non-division opponent before facing a division opponent have an ROI of 4.4%. It is important to learn these trends exist so you can avoid foolishly betting against a well-established pattern.

Sweet Revenge

In a trend that has shown a tremendous 9.7% ROI since 2015, road underdogs perform exceptionally well when their starting pitcher had a bad start his last time out. We consider a bad start to be four or fewer innings while allowing five or more earned runs.

This trend shows that these guys are professionals. Although the media, fans, and betting public may turn on them after a bad outing, these pitchers display extraordinary resiliency and will bounce back to get the job done more often than not.

Very few people are confident enough to back a pitcher who just got rocked. This means that value exists if you bet the pitcher in question will throw well. Being bold and taking advantage of skewed lines are two qualities necessary to turn a large profit betting baseball.

Ahhh, doesn’t it feel great? Baseball is finally back. I am attempting to get us back into the baseball frame of mind this week so we can hit the ground running. See you on top!

Mike Trout, the sequel. 💪💪 pic.twitter.com/FVsQme0AM1

— MLB (@MLB) April 6, 2019