Although primarily known for its North American connections, baseball’s popularity (both watching it and betting on it) is spreading across the globe. The sport lends itself to statistical analysis, which from a betting perspective offers a viable opportunity to make a profit. Read on to find out why betting on baseball is becoming so popular.
Not forgetting the past but thinking about the future
More than any other sport, baseball is steeped in its history. For 140 years, the same National league in operation today has scheduled, played and meticulously recorded games as they’re churned out, every one of which can be perused in countless internet archives. Want to know if the Yankees won on May 27, 1923? A quick search says will tell you the answer, and that Bob Meusel hit a home run behind a strong pitching effort by Sad Sam Jones.
- Read: How to bet on baseball
The baseball archives hold endless amounts of interesting information but they also serve as a reminder of how integral data is to the sport. The emergence of sabermetrics and data analysis in baseball came long before many others and now, in the modern era, this kind of approach is more prevalent than ever.
In 2015, the Statcast age dawned. Statcast is a tool which uses high-resolution cameras to collect data on every physical element of the game, measuring speed, directness of routes to the ball by fielders, movement and rotation speed of pitches and dozens of other elements.
The data that’s come with technological advancements in baseball has placed MLB in yet another stratosphere where available data is concerned, meaning that mathematically savvy bettors need not to have a lifetime of viewing experience to understand the game’s goings-on and take advantage of patterns in the chaos. More or less, the baseball betting tools you need to thrive is available on the internet.
You can easily determine how teams hit in day or night times, against right or left-handed pitchers, in each stadium, whether home or away and much more. Each statistical reality offers bettors the potential to exploit an edge and while the general public may sometimes regard statistical consumption to be tedious, the sharp bettor knows this is part of betting any sport successfully.
The game within a game
More than any other sport, baseball is played in layers, each of which you can spend infinite time studying if you so choose. You can study the season, the game, the inning, the at bat and the pitch, with extraordinary resources available to dedicate yourself to each one.
Some bettors will study the seasons, focusing on large sample size and the marathon effort; others will focus instead on the at bat with attention paid to pitch choices and hitting strategy. It’s a game to suit all tastes.
Mastering any of these layers can give you a marked advantage in MLB betting markets. If you know a team or superstar hits poorly against lefthanders you will know to make adjustments in your estimated odds. Futures markets are heavily influenced by team popularity and media market size, offering bettors serious opportunities to capitalize.
Games every day
No other league offers as many games consistently at the highest professional level as Major League Baseball. The major leagues in basketball (NBA) and hockey (NHL) grant nights off between most games, while soccer forces bettors to jump from league to league to maintain consistent action. Tennis is on the other end of the scale with the big events taking place every few months.
MLB’s 30 teams each play 162 games over the course of a regular season which lasts less than 190 days (usually April through to November), resulting in an average of 12 games a day over the course of the season. Put simply, there’s ample opportunity to analyse your options and find value in the market on a regular basis.
The pitch clock
The single biggest complaint you hear from baseball-detractors is the slow pace and duration of games. Baseball is the complete opposition of fast-paced sports such as basketball and soccer - it’s slow (games can last over three hours). Although the length of a game isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it is about to change.
After many attempts in recent years to speed the game up, Commissioner Rob Manfred has made it clear he intends to institute a 20-second pitch clock in regular season play for when there are no runners on base. This should lead to more-constant action and a shorter time investment - good news for those who aren’t happy to sit and wait for the action. In short, MLB is about to neutralize your issues.
Things like Statcast, the introduction of the pitch clock and various adjustments to the sport that have happened in between, it’s clear to see that baseball both celebrates the past and embraces the future.
As a sport, baseball is very similar to the concept sports betting itself; the more you invest in it (not in terms of money), the greater the return. In short, if you have patience and can appreciate the benefits of using data then you’ll be well suited to betting on baseball.
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