BASEBALL HANDICAPPING (BETTING HOME DOGS)
In all sports, one of the most fundamental handicapping axioms known to mankind is playing the home underdogs. I need not explain why this is generally a good starting point for picking winners. Most readers here are way beyond the fundamentals of sports betting.
However, if there is one sport where the notion of "live" home dogs as solid value bets does not apply, it is probably Major League Baseball. Unlike other sports -- such as football, basketball, and hockey -- emotional and psychological factors are not nearly as strong in baseball. A team that gets humiliated against an opponent on the first night is not any more likely to "bounce back" in the next game. Baseball is about margins and playing percentages. Not emotion. College football and basketball are emotional games. Not baseball.
Not everyone agrees with this point of view. One handicapper who is well-respected and who has written extensively about playing home dogs in baseball is Mike Lee. He wrote a book called "Betting the Bases" back in 1981. The book (it's more of a short paperback, really) contains several systems that produced winners twenty years ago.
I first became familiar with Lee's book a few years after it was released and I used it with some success about a decade ago. Lee tracked home dogs in baseball for about five years (back in the late 70s and early 80s) and discovered that if you were to simply played all the home dogs, you would have made money. That might sound ancient, as well as oversimplistic, but it worked. Lee's data proves it, and my own success with it (albeit for not as long a period of time) convinced me that oddsmakers had not sufficiently caught on to the power of "live home dogs" in baseball. In baseball, the fundamentals pretty much stay the same. So the question is -- does Lee's analysis hold up to this day?
The answer, in my opinion, seems to be -- NO.
I played a total of 30 home dogs so far this season and have been getting killed. I'm down $3,000 betting home dogs in baseball, alone. That puts me into the red for the baseball season. Of course, I did not bet every home underdog on the board. But if I did -- I would be down considerably more money. Of course, 30 games is a blip on the radar screen. But, it is a disturbing run that is cause for alarm.
Now, to a more important question. IS THIS JUST A TEMPORARY DOWNSWING, or is in indicative of the possibility that oddsmakers have now OVERCOMPENSATED and are not favoring the superior road teams to the degree they should really be favored? If you expect me to answer this question -- I must admit that I can't. I can only add some personal experience and an opinion.
What I have seen in the last 20 years since Lee's book was written is that you do not see home dogs in the +$170 range and up, nearly as often as back in the 1980s. Bettors used to love to back the Dodgers, Yankees, and Reds -- and they were often prohibitive favorites on the road. You made money betting against those road teams, because while they may have collectively won 55 percent on the road, it was not enough to cover prices at -$120 and up. But today, you rarely see a road favorite higher than +$150. $170 and up is extremely rare and only happens when Martinez, Schilling, or Johnson are getting the start against a lousy home team. Even the dreadful Tampa Bay Devil Rays are usually no more than about a +$120 underdog at home.
To conclude my point -- I think we may be seeing the pendulum swing too far in favor of the underdogs. Most successful sports bettors understand that betting on dogs is the way to go. But, what happens when TOO MANY bettors understand this? The prices drop and real value is betting the favorites, which -- in some cases -- may be UNDERPRICED.
Betting favorites is suicide in baseball. But betting them on the road at a decent price with superior pitching may be the way to go. Good pitcher's win games -- not matter where they pitch, home or away.
I'll be back soon with another interesting facet of baseball betting.
In all sports, one of the most fundamental handicapping axioms known to mankind is playing the home underdogs. I need not explain why this is generally a good starting point for picking winners. Most readers here are way beyond the fundamentals of sports betting.
However, if there is one sport where the notion of "live" home dogs as solid value bets does not apply, it is probably Major League Baseball. Unlike other sports -- such as football, basketball, and hockey -- emotional and psychological factors are not nearly as strong in baseball. A team that gets humiliated against an opponent on the first night is not any more likely to "bounce back" in the next game. Baseball is about margins and playing percentages. Not emotion. College football and basketball are emotional games. Not baseball.
Not everyone agrees with this point of view. One handicapper who is well-respected and who has written extensively about playing home dogs in baseball is Mike Lee. He wrote a book called "Betting the Bases" back in 1981. The book (it's more of a short paperback, really) contains several systems that produced winners twenty years ago.
I first became familiar with Lee's book a few years after it was released and I used it with some success about a decade ago. Lee tracked home dogs in baseball for about five years (back in the late 70s and early 80s) and discovered that if you were to simply played all the home dogs, you would have made money. That might sound ancient, as well as oversimplistic, but it worked. Lee's data proves it, and my own success with it (albeit for not as long a period of time) convinced me that oddsmakers had not sufficiently caught on to the power of "live home dogs" in baseball. In baseball, the fundamentals pretty much stay the same. So the question is -- does Lee's analysis hold up to this day?
The answer, in my opinion, seems to be -- NO.
I played a total of 30 home dogs so far this season and have been getting killed. I'm down $3,000 betting home dogs in baseball, alone. That puts me into the red for the baseball season. Of course, I did not bet every home underdog on the board. But if I did -- I would be down considerably more money. Of course, 30 games is a blip on the radar screen. But, it is a disturbing run that is cause for alarm.
Now, to a more important question. IS THIS JUST A TEMPORARY DOWNSWING, or is in indicative of the possibility that oddsmakers have now OVERCOMPENSATED and are not favoring the superior road teams to the degree they should really be favored? If you expect me to answer this question -- I must admit that I can't. I can only add some personal experience and an opinion.
What I have seen in the last 20 years since Lee's book was written is that you do not see home dogs in the +$170 range and up, nearly as often as back in the 1980s. Bettors used to love to back the Dodgers, Yankees, and Reds -- and they were often prohibitive favorites on the road. You made money betting against those road teams, because while they may have collectively won 55 percent on the road, it was not enough to cover prices at -$120 and up. But today, you rarely see a road favorite higher than +$150. $170 and up is extremely rare and only happens when Martinez, Schilling, or Johnson are getting the start against a lousy home team. Even the dreadful Tampa Bay Devil Rays are usually no more than about a +$120 underdog at home.
To conclude my point -- I think we may be seeing the pendulum swing too far in favor of the underdogs. Most successful sports bettors understand that betting on dogs is the way to go. But, what happens when TOO MANY bettors understand this? The prices drop and real value is betting the favorites, which -- in some cases -- may be UNDERPRICED.
Betting favorites is suicide in baseball. But betting them on the road at a decent price with superior pitching may be the way to go. Good pitcher's win games -- not matter where they pitch, home or away.
I'll be back soon with another interesting facet of baseball betting.
