Baseball Betting Statistics

Baseball betting statistics...where to even start? Statistics in baseball can be extremely overwhelming, especially with the advent of sabermetrics.

Just look at some of the statistical or fantasy websites out there and your eyes will start to glaze over by the loads and loads of stats that are posted. I'll tell you right now, don't get bogged down by all of the baseball betting statistics

They are important as a handicapper, but you can certainly get lost and your handicapping will suffer. Understand the different stats and implement the ones you feel most appropriate in determining your power ratings and estimated win probabilities.

Some handicappers may implement a ton of data and statistics into their numbers, while others have been successful at using just a few. There's no right or wrong answer, it's up to you and you're individual handicapping.

What matters, is that the statistics you use allow you to create accurate numbers that can reveal +EV. It doesn't really matter how you get there, it's just that you get there.

As I've said many times, there's no one secret formula to winning at baseball. No two successful handicappers use the same road map. And that's ok, because all we're wanting to do is find +EV situations that will allow us to make a profit long term.

Now we're not going to get into the creation of power ratings here (we will in our Handicapping a Baseball Game chapter), but rather go over a few baseball betting statistics we believe are vital to developing accurate probabilities.

Think of baseball betting statistics as the building blocks to creating valuable win expectations. It's these blocks that will serve as the basis to your technical handicapping.

Once we go over a few baseball betting statistics, we'll give you some good websites for tracking these stats. The stats we're going to list here can be used in predicting a teams offensive output, while we'll cover more pitching/defensive stats in our next chapter, Pitching/Defensive Statistics.

So enough of the chit chat, let's get to some key statistics that should be implemented in your overall baseball handicapping strategy.

As I said, I'm not going to barrage you with a list of offensive baseball statistics. You obviously have the option to follow as many baseball betting statistics as you like in your own handicapping.

I'll list a few websites below that will overwhelm you with more than enough stats than you'll ever want to know. Feel free to pick, choose, and adjust as you want. We're all in it for the same reason and that's to create accurate win probabilities.

I believe the three most important offensive baseball betting statistics are slugging percentage, on base percentage, and OTS. These stats can be a great start when creating your own power ratings.

For those of you not entirely familiar with these, here's a quick definition of each:

Slugging Percentage - This basically is a percentage that gives us a teams/individuals ability to not only get on base, but hit for power. The formula looks like this: (hits + doubles + (triples x 2) + (homeruns x 3)) / at-bats.

On Base Percentage - This gives us a percentage of how often a team/player gets on base. The formula looks like this: (hits + walks + hit by pitch) / (at-bats + walks + hit by pitch + sacrifice fly).

OTS - OTS is not an official stat. It was first introduced to me in the Betting Baseball series of books and is simply slugging percentage times on base percentage.

OTS is a step to actually creating your own power ratings because you can take an individual teams OTS and compare it to that of the league average. Let's say the A's OTS is .156 and the league average is .137.

We would divide .156 by .137 to get 1.14 (114%). This would tell us that the A's OTS is 14% above the league average. This is a very simple formula that can easily be inserted and updated in a spreadsheet because you'll be able to find updated team slugging % and on base % just about anywhere

While the general OTS will give you an overall idea, you'll probably want to break it down even further i.e. last 5 games, last 15 games, on the road, at home...etc.

There's certainly more detailed and in depth baseball betting statistics pertaining to offense than just OTS, but I really feel this one does a fine job and is very easy to understand and manipulate.

As you can see, baseball betting statistics (for a team) don't mean anything unless you have something to compare it to. When creating power ratings, it's crucial to compare the teams average (whatever stat you're looking at) to the league average, so you'll at least have a starting point.

This will immediately give you the percentage of how much better or worse a team is than the league average and then you can take that into account when creating your own lines. Remember, you're trying to create a line that is more accurate (+EV) than the line being offered by a sportsbook.

I think you get the point we're making and how you can apply it to other baseball betting statistics in creating your own lines and expected win probabilities. While I won't go into great detail with these because you should have a good understanding of how to apply them, here are the other offensive statistics I use:

Batting Average on Balls in Play - balls in play that fall safely for hits, but not including home runs...very similar to DER (Defense Efficiency Ratio) from an offensive standpoint, which we'll discuss in our next chapter. Here's the formula: (H-HR)/(AB-K-HR+SF).

Gross Production Average - Gross Production Average, a variation of OPS, but more accurate and easier to interpret. The exact formula is (OBP*1.8+SLG)/4, adjusted for ballpark factor. The scale of GPA is similar to BA: .200 is lousy, .265 is around average and .300 is a star. A simple formula for converting GPA to runs is PA*1.356*(GPA^1.77)...as defined by Hardball Times.

Trust me, there's literally hundreds more, but these will definitely get you started in the right direction. Remember, you can make it as advanced as you want and there are a lot of people out there, whether it be on betting forums or just baseball sites in general, that are more than willing to help you with inputting the correct formula's in a spreadsheet.

Of course, the same can be said for us here at Sports Betting Insights as well. With questions on formulas and correctly inputting them into a spreadsheet, we're more than willing to share our advice (we'll recommend a few forums with some great help and insight in our Handicapping a Baseball Game chapter.

Obviously, subjectivity must be involved as well, but the statistical part is also very important. We'll get into the defensive/pitching baseball betting statistics in our next chapter.

You can literally spend hours upon hours looking at baseball betting statistics. Feel free to spend as much time as you'd like, but don't get to caught up in them to where they takeover your handicapping entirely.

Since we're here to help, we're always happy to share other sites that have great information as well...but of course, Sports Betting Insights is by far the best (not that we're biased). I use all of the sites listed below on a regular basis and they contain a ton of stats, data, information, articles...etc.

As I've said, you can get overwhelmed in no time, so if you're not familiar with the intricacies of baseball stat type sites, then please take it slowly. Here's a list of my favorites:

There are plenty of others, but these offer more than enough data. Go to each one and browse around for a while, you'll see they all give some unique information. But just remember not to overwhelm yourself.

Well there we have it, your introduction to offensive baseball betting statistics. As we say throughout this Baseball Betting Guide, we're here to provide you with good quality information, but we're not going to do everything for you.

It's up to you to take it to the next level. Baseball betting can be profitable, but there certainly is a learning curve if you're starting from the beginning. Take your time and go slow.

Next up, we'll cover some defensive baseball statistics that can be implemented into your handicapping. As always, best of luck in all your sports betting endeavors.

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