This article is part of our MLB Picks series.
MLB Betting: Baseball Betting Trends To Monitor
Baseball is back! Never too early to take victory laps on Fantasy teams, or try to analyze where it all went wrong on some others. Congrats to AL MVP Oswaldo Cabrera and NL MVP Lourdes Gurriel Jr., as well as the surprise NL champs, the Pittsburgh Pirates. I already have mentally sold off for the Mets by the trade deadline. Time to clear out payroll for Juan Soto and AL Cy Young winner Corbin Burnes in 2025.
Back to reality, we still have 98% or so of 2024 to play with. I did some data mining from games over the last three seasons, and found a handful of concepts that have produced a positive Return on Investment (ROI) over the last three seasons. Past performance never guarantees future results, especially when it looks more like statistical noise than something explainable. But hey, I will ride some of these early in the season to see if the trends hold.
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MLB Betting Trends: Division Home Dogs (+150 to +199 odds) 96-124 SU, 17.68% ROI
Playing a familiar foe at home feels like a good idea in any sport, but net-net in MLB it did not win in the last three seasons. Overall, home division teams have gone 1581-1410 but with an ROI of -3.56%. Stipulating they get plus money at least should work better, right?
Not so fast, it actually has a -4.51% ROI. Nor does it pay to wager on super large home division dogs, mostly because when the money line gets that high, the spreads widen too much to make money consistently on either side, Home division dogs +200 in higher are few and far between. They went just 14-42 over the last three seasons with an ugly -17.77% ROI. Betting on the big favorites did not work either though, as it produced a -4.01% ROI despite going 42-14. Just stay away.
But fear not, we have a sweet spot. When you get +150 to +199, the divisional home teams went 96-124 and cleaned up with a 17.68% ROI. And it does make some intuitive sense. Home favorites and short home dogs likely just do not get enough edge to win consistently. Get the payout a little higher however and we hit a point where the vig does not eat us up and dogs are a bit more live against teams they play 14 times per season.
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Interleague Away, Under on Totals 9.5 or higher, 150-121 SU, 5.09% ROI
Playing the under always sounds sharp, but try to avoid watching the game when you have money on it. Sitting through a high baseball under really makes for a tough viewing experience as it necessarily means you have to root against scoring in a matchup of bad pitchers or the game takes place in a launching pad. But it can and does work.
Interleague games of course pit two teams that rarely play, so we likely have two lineups that do not have much familiarity with the opposing pitchers. Games at Coors make up a disproportionate part of this sample, but ignoring them actually improves the results. Non-Coors interleague unders with the total 9.5 or higher have gone 130-99 for a 7.4% ROI.
Both weekend Cubs at Rangers games qualified for this play and the Under lost both times. Thank you (not) Jose Leclerc.
Elite Teams on Road, -120 or better, 191-183 SU, 5.53% ROI
I will define elite teams as the Braves, Astros, Dodgers and Yankees. Yes, other teams emerge, but we do not know for sure who else will fit that bill. We do know that for the most part the aforementioned quartet fields quality teams year in and year out until further notice. They generally cost money to play on straight money lines, but when you can grab them with plus odds or short money odds on the road, it pays over time.
This play works even better when they play each other. The road team -120 or better has gone 32-34 straight up, but with an ROI of 12.37%. This play has roared out of the gate with the Yankees sweeping the Astros in Houston.
It does not really require rocket science to sell me on this play. Winning teams…..win. You generally need to pay up or use the run line to back them. When the price comes down, the market has likely overcompensated for something like the SP matchup and underpriced that they still do everything else well.
Over when total is exactly 7, 222-167 SU, 9% ROI
Under when total is < 7, 116-101 SU, 4.66% ROI
I group these two together just to show that Fun With Numbers will always find something. Playing the over on very low total games intuitively makes sense. But on those relatively rare instances where it is lined at 6.5 or lower, the under has actually produced a positive return. Yet with totals exactly at 7, the overs have done quite well.
I have no good explanation for this quirk though I did play one this year.
I will reiterate what I said in that Discord thread. I both expect this play to mean revert but I will jump on it a bit until it does. Maybe something about the extra inning Ghost Runner causes more of these 7's to go over.
