Baseball Betting Changes

Earlier this season while doing research, came across a rather curious trend in major league baseball. At that point, it had been winning at a high rate of return and though it has slowed down to a point, still delivering far better than average results. Having never seen it mentioned anywhere else, decided to see if it had any legs beyond this season.

The angle read this way – What does a baseball team do against the money line, after exactly three consecutive games of 10 or more hits and next contest is on the road?

What was uncovered, road teams in this role have lost 40 of 62 games played to date in 2008, a 35.4 winning percentage. Playing against these teams has earned a dependable +15.60 units of profit, right at the All-Star break. What has been a boom for bettors is profits have been available in all areas concerning the money line.

Road favorites are 9-12, -5.85 units
Road underdogs are 12-25, -7.60 units
Road team “Pick” 1-3, -2.15 units.

Is this trend an anomaly for this season or has this been missed by baseball betting researchers?
Went back to 2007 and found 124 instances of this occurring for the entire season and the results were far different than this current campaign. Last year road teams were 61-63 in the same scenario and actually showed a profit in all games.

Road favorites were 26-19, +2.85 units
Road underdogs were 31-39, +6.99 units
Road team “Pick” 4-5, -1.25 units.

When I started thinking about what these numbers would mean in terms of perception, had to try break it down two ways, with two different conclusions. It would seem if a team is hitting the ball well enough to post three consecutive games of double digit base-knocks, the carryover affect would be strong, no matter where they played, unless they happened to draw the ace of the opposing team’s staff.

Having started with the 2008 numbers first, developed another way of looking at this, surmising the road team has not been able to continue the momentum of swinging the lumber with a high degree of execution and just ran out of luck as the road team, with the law of average just catching up with them.

Decided to put on archeologist attire and dig into 2006 and see which way was more prevalent. As it turned out, the original perception was right on the money, with road teams showing large gains and significant profit.

Road favorites were 25-10, +13.45 units
Road underdogs were 34-41, +9.35 units
Road team “Pick” 4-10, -6.5 units.

This reinforced original belief a hot-hitting team is dangerous, even on the road. The confidence level is high for those in the lineup and they are less intimated by playing on the road as a whole. A piece of very useful information was found, showing road teams off three games of 10 or more hits that are a “Pick”, are mere 9-18 the last three years.

Going back to where we started, based on the previous two years, how does one explain the lack of success road teams have had in 2008? While no one answer will encompass the entire scope of this question, there would appear to be one explanation that generally covers why this has occurred to date. As of right now, only three teams have a winning road record in major league baseball. In 2007, seven teams ended up above .500 record as visiting team and 2006 saw a total of 10 squads finishing in-the-black as visitors. Those numbers correlate to highlighted figures.

Thus far, road teams are winning 43.1 percent of all games played compared to 46 percent the prior three seasons. Will the trend of playing against these specific road teams continue or will the numbers equal out by the end of the year as per usual? Of course their no way to know precisely, but every year in all the various sports, unusual situations go against the norm, this could be one worth following.