There is plenty of advice out there about how to bet on different ball games.
There is much info on key elements that everyone should stick to for taking on, say, a football bookie or an NBA betting site Philippines, UK or other country allows to operate. But that is often only one side of the story because along with knowing what to do, it’s also important to know what not to do.
For baseball betting, it’s a good idea to follow the advice that takes you along a tried and tested path, like only wagering at the best bookmakers, for a good, safe user experience – nowadays it’s easy to find expert reviews and ratings to make your choice. But here we look at five key things that you should avoid doing along the way.
Don’t Just Bet the Big Favourites
There are strong favourites in any baseball league, and typically these are overpriced by bookmakers. Why? That’s because recreational bettors will normally lean towards only backing highly popular teams who are favourites.
The lazy approach by casual bettors sees them more likely to wager on strong teams they have heard of, regardless of poor odds. If the Monterrey are red-hot title favourites for a season, that’s a team most casual bettors will back.
But if they are only ever very short-priced favourites to win every game, the margins on Monterrey are so small over a long period, that the rare losses are going to destroy any profit gained on them. Only ever backing strong favourites is likely to lead to losses and is not a solid approach.
Avoid Betting On Parlays
Parlays in baseball betting can be a money pit. These are bets designed to be attractive to inexperienced bettors because of their somewhat plausible-looking nature, turning a small stake into a huge payout.
Baseball Parlays are a great moneymaker, but only for bookmakers because they are high-risk bets at odds that shouldn’t be touched. Seasoned bettors will know that it’s hard winning a single Spread bet at a good value market, let alone trying to pull three or four selections together for a big multi-bet.
Don’t Overestimate Home-Field Advantages
Teams do generally have better home records, because of familiarity on home turf, but bettors tend to overestimate its importance. In the 2023 Mexican League, only five teams finished with a home win rate above 60%, meaning, more importantly, thirteen teams didn’t.
So home-field advantage can skew a betting perspective outside the very top teams. If you are looking at the league with an average home win rate of around 54%, that should not be enough to deter from looking at teams winning on the road often.
If that’s coupled with publicly overvalued favourites at home, then the inflated road price is usually quite strong. Divisional away underdogs are a highlight of this, as they tend to lose less often against divisional rivals than outsiders.
Star Power Doesn’t Always Win Out
The biggest stars of the game have an influence over matches, but they don’t win matches by themselves, so don’t get blinded by the solo star power factor. A good way to assess this is to look at the ‘Wins Above Replacement’ (WAR) baseball statistic.
This gauges how much a player contributes additional wins compared to if they weren’t playing. This is particularly useful for the influential defensive positions of shortstop and catcher. If a team is stacked with players that rank highly in the WAR stat, great.
But if a team only has one or two-star players, that doesn’t necessarily raise the chances of that team having a winning season. What the WAR stat shows is that it’s the strength of the bullpen that matters more, as a star player is unlikely to have such an influence to guide a team to more than 5 to 7 extra wins in a season. Besides, no player performs at their best every game.
Don’t Bet on Props
Prop bets like an over/under on a Player’s Singles, Player Stolen Bases, Total Runs Odd/Even or Player Total Bases are markets which have very little juice to squeeze out in terms of value and margins.
Betting on things like player props narrows the view of the entire baseball match just to a very small part and ignores everything else, which is the wrong approach. Everything matters in baseball. Every player in the bullpen will shape the game one way or another.
The better approach is to target the broader markets like the Point Spread and the First Five markets by analytics and research and by targeting the statistics to fit your betting preference.
In Summary
It can take time to learn the right statistical analysis for a market and formulate your betting strategy, as well as understand odds value. Be in for the long haul instead of swinging for the fences from day one.
