Wagering on Quality Pitchers after poor outing

We have all been there as sports bettors, an attractive wager has been made on the team ace and he’s shelled and gone by the fourth inning, causing wagering accounts to decline. You understand as baseball bettor, the good pitchers are going to get beat, but when they are battered like the heavy bag at the gym, that is more gut-wrenching. After taking such a loss, is it a good or bad idea to follow up with that same pitcher in his next start?

The first order of business was to determine what makes a quality pitcher in 2009 and decided a minimum of 10 starts had to be made, with a personal winning percentage of 60 percent or higher. This pitcher had to be active or not injured, since it would do us no good to follow somebody who wasn’t pitching to begin with.

A bad outing was determined to be five or more earned runs in a single start. There were a couple of instances where particular hurlers fit the criteria in surrendering five or more runs with one or zero being earned. The argument becomes where to draw the line, thus settled on five earned and disregarded everything else.

Of course many of the names are quite familiar, like a who’s-who in baseball with Tim Lincecum, Josh Beckett, Roy Halladay, Johan Santana and Felix Hernandez to name a few all making the list. As always, confounding pitchers have big years out of nowhere. A Matt Palmer from the Angels, Tim Wakefield, Matt Cain, Scott Feldman and Kevin Slowey all pop up unexpectedly. Even discarded Jason Marquis, who is baseball’s first 12-game winner, finds a home in Colorado of all places.

In trying to learn how top notch hurlers would pitch after being cuffed around, the categories were broken down into favorites, underdogs and pick, with the end result of the game, not the pitchers record what we were seeking.

When a pitcher is tattooed (possibly poor word choice in today’s world) and favored in next game, his record is well above average, but not a great help to the sports bettors. The pitcher’s team is 33-21, 61.1 percent, not bad, however not the best bet one could find at +3.9 units of profit.

How would a capable thrower of the horsehide do when the game could go either way with a money line of -105? It turned out to be about as expected with 6-5 record and squeaking out a slight profit.

Where the real money can be found, is when this pummeled pitcher takes the mound as an underdog in next start. Most baseball players could tell you the spread of a football game or even basketball contest before they would know the money line on a game they were playing. In many cases, the pitcher is likely to know he has to bare-down more off a substandard outing and would have a sense what his team needs based on opposing team and opposition pitcher.

In this spot the underdog chucker is 19-9, 67.8 percent and baseball bettors pick up a sweet +16.35 units.

When you add all the numbers together, the total arrives at 58-35, +21 units. The 62.3 percent winning percentage is nothing special, which is not that far above the minimum requirement.

Nevertheless, place our roughed up delivery man in the miscast role of underdog and watch him deliver a profit worth crowing about.