Baseball is back, and so is betting on baseball! After a long winter break, we’re finally returning to the game that we love so much. If you’re passionate about sports betting, then you’ll want to get down to the books as soon as possible to get all your favorite sportsbooks open for business, especially now that the Major League Baseball season is back. Thanks to modern-day technology, online bookies have made it much easier for US residents to place bets on baseball; and with the great baseball summer season almost upon us, that means you have a lot to look forward to.
How to Look At Baseball Betting Lines
When you first land on a betting site, you’ll be greeted by the terms and conditions (T&C), which will almost certainly include some sort of clause that states if you’re a US resident, taxes are going to be taken out of your winnings. While this may not seem like a big deal, it can add up to significant sums of money over the course of the season. With that in mind, how can you ensure that your betting dollars are being effectively spent? The answer is simple: look at the betting lines!
You’ll find a whole range of information on a baseball betting line, from the betting odds to the total number of runs that will be scored or allowed. Odds tell you how much someone is willing to wager on a particular outcome, and the number of runs predicts how many points you’ll be awarding to your winning wager. If you’re familiar with NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) football, you’ll know that getting the score right is one of the most important factors in determining the final outcome of a game. While there’s no exact science to handicapping baseball, using the right information will at least give you a fighting chance of coming out on top.
Why Are Baseball Betting Lines Important?
The lines are always important, and they’ve always been important in some shape or form, but they hit an all-new level of importance now that the government has placed a travel ban on non-essential travel to and from the United States. If you’re a baseball fan living in the US and you don’t want to be restricted in where you can travel to see your favorite team play, then these lines are for you. Despite the best intentions of the administration and the eagerness of the American public to get back to their “normal” lives, it’s still considered extremely odd to make sporting events a priority right now given the global pandemic.
How Do I Read The Lines?
The lines may not be in easy-to-understand language, but they’re still pretty easy to follow. Basically, what you want to do is look for teams that are both underdogs (they’re assumed to lose) and teams that are favorites (they’re expected to win). Then, you want to add up the number of runs that the favorite team is expected to score and subtract the number of runs that the underdog team is expected to score. The team that scores the most amount of runs wins, and it’s as simple as that!
For example, if you believe that the Houston Astros are going to beat the Los Angeles Dodgers in the World Series, you may want to wager on the underdogs (Astros) and collect some winnings. However, if you believe that the New York Yankees are going to beat the Houston Astros in the World Series, you may want to wager on the favorites (Yankees) and collect some winnings. It’s all about believing that your team is going to win and being able to back it up with logic and statistics!
What Is The Best Strategy With Baseball Betting?
There are many different strategies that you can utilize when betting on baseball. One of the simplest and most effective strategies is to look for games with underdogs that are also favorites. Studies have shown that this is a strategy that leads to an edge of more than 50% over the course of the season. Simply put, dogs (underdogs) are easier to identify and exploit than favorites, and this is key if you’re looking for a strategy that pays off over the long term.
Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, major sports have largely remained closed to ensure that fans don’t congregate in large numbers. This, in turn, has limited the amount of places that people can travel to and from, and it has limited the number of games that can be played. Thanks to a combination of the sports world moving to the online sphere and the government’s desire to ensure that people don’t get too carried away during these challenging times, we’re seeing more games being played than ever before. More than 4.9 million tickets were sold during the first week of baseball season, alone.
With more games being played and more people wanting to place bets on them, we’re seeing the lines move to the opposite end of the spectrum. Instead of being relatively tight, the betting odds are now extremely long, sometimes even longer than the actual game’s outcome. This is largely thanks to the government’s desire to ensure that people remain healthy and active during these unprecedented times, along with sportsbooks using the opportunity to make some extra cash during these difficult times. When the games do return, there will be more than enough evidence to suggest that people want to bet on them, and the books will have to make a conscious decision about whether or not to accommodate these bookmakers.