Baseball Handicapping Articles

Using Bat/Home Run Ratio in MLB Handicapping and Betting
by Wes Clayton - 4/24/2019

Baseball sure has changed over the course of the past 20 years. It seems as if Billy Beane and his "Moneyball" philosophy has turned baseball (and other sports) into an analytic and sabermetric frenzy. With all the new statistics these days, it seems overwhelming and hard to follow for the average fan. Oddsmakers have capitalized, however, using these new categories to create sharper lines as it relates to MLB sides and totals.

Baseball Betting Advice: Easiest Early-Season Schedules
by Trevor Whenham - 4/5/2019

Not all schedules are created equal in the Major Leagues - at least not in the short term. Over the course of an entire season, there are so many games that schedules mostly even out. But in the short term - over a few weeks or a month - there can be a wide difference in the range between the toughest schedules and the easiest.

MLB Betting Advice: Handicapping the Umpires Can Lead to Betting Profits
by Trevor Whenham - 4/4/2019

Baseball is attractive to a lot of bettors and mystifying and intimidating to others. What makes it simultaneously so intriguing and so rewarding is that there are so many things going on and so many ways to handicap the same game. You can give starting pitchers all the credit or basically ignore them. You can prioritize hitters. Or ballparks. Or bullpens. Or countless other things. One aspect that doesn't get as much attention - especially from casual bettors - but which can have a big impact on the outcome of games, and makes it worth betting as a result, is the umpire.

MLB Expert Betting Advice: Outlook for Teams with High Futures Odds
by Trevor Whenham - 3/20/2019

Spring training is a time for hope. Everything is new and fresh and often young, and almost every team thinks that they could be better than people think they will be - that this could be, to some extent at least, the year. What we want to look at here are not the teams that might actually be right about that, but the ones that are fooling themselves.

Expert MLB Handicapping: Does Machado Make Padres a Contender?
by Trevor Whenham - 3/7/2019

The Padres are, theoretically at least, in the midst of a long rebuild. It has certainly been long - they haven't made the playoffs since 2006 and haven't even had a winning season since 2011. They have been taking the slow route, gradually building a farm system that ranks as the best in baseball right now. But this spring they started playing a whole new game, splashing out basically all the money in the world to land Manny Machado for what should be the rest of his career.

MLB Betting Trends: Handicapping the Best and Worst on Moneyline from Last Season
by Trevor Whenham - 3/1/2019

There are teams in baseball that are a pleasure to bet on all year because they consistently produce big profits. And there are those that are consistently a pleasure to bet against because they couldn't win an inter-squad scrimmage with any reliability. Both kinds are equally attractive to bettors. What we want to do here is look at the very best teams to bet on last year, and the best to bet against, to see what we might expect of them this year:

Baseball Betting Advice: MLB Teams that Could Surprise
by Trevor Whenham - 3/1/2019

By the time spring training rolls around, we have a pretty good sense of which teams are going to be contenders and which ones aren't. We have expectations in our mind for most teams. However, every year there are teams that don't meet up to expectations. And the better that we as handicappers get at figuring out which teams could outplay their expectations, the more we can profit. Here are four teams that people don't expect too much from.

MLB Teams that Could Disappoint Bettors in 2019
by Trevor Whenham - 2/28/2019

Now that spring training is underway, people are starting to think about how they feel about teams heading into the season. And as those opinions get established among the betting public, there are inevitably some teams that other people seem to like a lot more than you do.

MLB Betting Advice for 2019: Toughest Aces to Handicap
by Trevor Whenham - 2/28/2019

The biggest single key to success in baseball betting is being able to understand and evaluate starting pitchers. No guy has a bigger impact on the outcome of the game than the starting pitcher. Sometimes pitchers are easy to evaluate - we know that a strong starter in top form is easy to trust and that a bad pitcher with a rough matchup is very tough to appreciate.

MLB Spring Training Betting Advice and Expert Baseball Handicapping
by Trevor Whenham - 2/21/2019

The preseason in every sport is a painful experience from a viewing perspective. With one exception - there are few pleasures greater for a baseball fan than settling into the stands in Arizona or Florida and watching some spring baseball. It's an unadulterated joy. And because it can be so fun to watch, and because it draws big crowds and generates plenty of excitement, there are people that get the idea that betting on spring training games would be a good idea, too.

MLB Totals Betting Trends for Hot Over and Under Teams
by Aaron Smith - 9/14/2018

The Arizona Diamondbacks have taken a lot of close losses of late, and they have slipped behind by 4.5 games in the National League West. Colorado continues to be the comeback kids, and the Rockies have won all sorts of close contests this year. The Rockies lead the Dodgers by 1.5 games. That should be a great race to the finish. The National League Central is interesting as well, since the Brewers have drawn to within 1.5 games of the Cubs. There is almost no drama in the American League as we finish out the regular season.

MLB Totals Betting Trends for Hot Over and Under Teams
by Aaron Smith - 8/31/2018

The most interesting race of the last month in Major League Baseball should be the National League West. The Diamondbacks lead the division by 1.5 games over Colorado. They are also only two games ahead of the Los Angeles Dodgers. All of these teams play each other a bunch in the final month of the season, so anything could happen in this division.

MLB Totals Betting Trends for Hot Over and Under Teams
by Aaron Smith - 8/17/2018

There are about 40 games left in the regular season, and the playoff races are heating up. The Houston Astros are only two games ahead of the Oakland Athletics in the American League West. Seattle is just four games back. Atlanta is 1.5 games ahead of Philadelphia in the National League East. The Cubs are 3.5 ahead of Milwaukee, and St. Louis is only five games back after a recent hot streak. Arizona leads the National League West by 1.5 games over Colorado, and the Los Angeles Dodgers are just two games back. There shouldn't be any drama in the American League East or the American League Central.

MLB Totals Betting Trends for Hot Over and Under Teams
by Aaron Smith - 8/3/2018

The MLB trade deadline brought a bunch of excitement this year. Chris Archer getting traded to the Pirates was an interesting deal. The Dodgers went all in once again this year as well, and that's a really dangerous team going forward. All of the contenders made at least one move, and I'm interested to see how the new pieces fit. Most teams are somewhere between 107 and 110 games into the season, so we'll have to start paying attention to playoff races before long.

MLB Betting Trends: Totals Report for Hot Over and Under Teams
by Aaron Smith - 7/14/2018

The MLB All Star Game is this coming Tuesday. It's the one break during the long grind of the baseball season. The players will certainly enjoy their break, and bettors should enjoy a little break from the action on the diamond as well. I think it's important to note that the time right before and right after the break is a very tricky one to handicap, so be careful with your plays in the coming days. It might be a good time to be more selective.

Daily Expert MLB Picks: Tuesday, July 10, 2018, Opening Line Report
by Alan Matthews - 7/10/2018

You will want to pay close attention to the starting pitchers around baseball on Tuesday. Why? Because on usual four days of rest, they would start again Sunday. And pitchers who start the Sunday before the All-Star Game -- which is next Tuesday in Washington, D.C. - are ineligible to pitch in that game. Thus, Houston's Justin Verlander will not be the American League starter as he might have been (has already been replaced on All-Star roster).

MLB Betting Trends: Totals Report for Hot Over and Under Teams
by Aaron Smith - 6/28/2018

The four best records in baseball are all American League teams. The National League is showing a lot of parity so far this season. The teams who were expected to be at the top of the National League have struggled at least compared to expectations. The Cubs, Dodgers, and Nationals have disappointed thus far. The Dodgers and Nationals have been really banged up. The Cubs pitching staff and defense have underachieved. We're almost exactly halfway through the regular season. Still plenty of time for some major changes in the standings.

Daily Expert MLB Picks: Friday, June 29, 2018, Opening Line Report
by Alan Matthews - 6/28/2018

Voting for the MLB All-Star starters closes next Thursday, and we could see something quite interesting in the American League. You would think that the Red Sox and Yankees would be dominating the voting because both are having huge seasons and they are the two most popular teams in the American League by far. Since MLB gave balloting over to the fans in 1970, neither the AL nor NL has had eight different teams (i.e. players at positions) win a fan election in the same year. Right now, that is happening in the Junior Circuit.

Expert MLB Handicapping: How Bad are the Royals?
by Trevor Whenham - 6/27/2018

The Kansas City Royals are bad. Really bad. They have sold off or lost most of their top talent in recent years, and they are in a bitter fight with the Orioles for the crown of being the worst team in the league. They are a mess. Typically, when I am breaking down a team I look at individual players, the strength and weaknesses of the team, and so on. For a team like this, though, the story is simple - there are very few strengths, and they could lose 120 games without too much of a struggle. So, instead of looking at the truly bad aspects of this team, let's look at six different storylines that will tell us more about this team. Spoiler alert - what we learn isn't positive.

MLB Betting Advice: Trades that Could Impact Bettors
by Trevor Whenham - 6/27/2018

The calendar is about to turn to July. That means that baseball trade season is about to fire up in a big way. July is when top teams spend too much to try to fill their gaps and bad teams give up on their season and hope to build a brighter future. As always, this promises to be a very interesting July, with a good mix of stars and role players available.