Swain Scheps

Betting on baseball is fun. When a game can change so dramatically from year to year, it can be difficult to demonstrate a system’s effectiveness over a long period of time (one of the characteristics of a high-quality system).For example, Major League Baseball sees big fluctuations in offensive production, and the most recent season, 2019, is the poster child for this phenomenon.

Baseball bettors tend to get enamored of teams on a roll. As pitchers get hot, and especially as the teams themselves start to roll, their odds get slightly longer than they’re worth. And the inverse is true as well: Teams who have hit rough waters look worse in the eyes of the average bettor than they really are.

Starting pitchers are the most dominant factor in any baseball game’s outcome, and in sports betting, the oddsmakers rely heavily on their recent performance to set the odds of any game. ©Brocreative/Shutterstock.com Look beyond traditional statistics. Let me say that a different way: Don’t just look beyond them; don’t look at traditional statistics at all.

Baseball was a statistician and probability expert’s sport early on and, after horse racing, was what popularized sports betting. The standard listing for baseball bets (shown in the following figure) shows a handful of key pieces of data: Time/Date: When the first pitch is schedule for each game. Rotation numbers: The unique identifier for each side of a baseball bet.

Because NFL teams are constructed according to strict rules—the NFL salary cap, draft structure, standardized schedule, and other forces aimed at maintaining parity—the talent level from top to bottom occupies a narrow band. That means successful teams have superior coaching, schemes, preparation, treatment, technology, process, contingency planning, and so on.

Preseason NFL football gets a surprising amount of betting action. In fact, many sports books report there's more money wagered on the Hall of Fame Game (the first preseason game) than on the rest of that day's events combined, which includes a summer Sunday of baseball, tennis, golf, and summer league basketball.

I don’t have much patience or appreciation for betting NFL team-specific angles. When I hear someone tell me that the Raiders are 15–6 ATS in their last 21 visits to the east coast, I roll my eyes (in the nicest way possible). If there’s no connecting logic behind a trend, I dismiss it.If you read the article on preseason betting however, you’ll see I’m an advocate for some coaching systems.