Baseball Betting Trends

Look at just about any sports betting website and you can find all kinds of random baseball betting trends. If you're looking for trends to compliment your bet, you can find them.

If your looking for trends that will go against your bet, you can find those to. If you can find 10 trends that are pointing towards a particular team, I guarantee I can find 10 that go against them.

Baseball betting trends are like elbows (or something else), everybody has them. What you need to recognize as an intelligent handicapper is how they factor in to your overall betting strategy.

Now this chapter isn't designed to lay out 100% or 0% trends. What we're going to do here is go over how to use (or not use) trends in your handicapping...they can look so pretty at times, but don't fall into the trap.

Most novice handicappers get way to caught up on trends. They think that since a trend is 10-0 in the past, then it must have a great chance at going 11-0.

Well, betting on sports doesn't work that way. Each event is independent of the other and just because it happened 10 times before, that really has no bearing on whether it will happen again (at least for the most part). Before we get in to it to deep, let's first examine what a trend is.

To be honest, they can be just about anything where the outcome has been the same for the majority of the time. Here is an example of a random trend: The Chicago Cubs are 1-7 as a road favorite of -125 to -175.

Here's another one: The Florida Marlins are 14-6 in road games off an upset win over a division rival as an underdog. How about another: San Francisco is 6-19 in home games after 3 straight games where they committed no errors.

Seriously, how random are these? I mean come on, do you really think any of these have any kind of bearing on who will win or lose the game? The answer is, ABSOLUTELY NOT.

I think you get the point and can see where I'm going. You can find trends to support or oppose any team you're wanting to bet or fade. The reason being is because they are so random and short sighted.

Well, that's a pretty good question, but in my opinion, I believe that the answer is...not a whole lot. They normally are such a small sample size that variance plays a huge factor.

In other words, you need a much bigger sample size than say 20, for the trend to show any significance. For instance, if you can find a trend that is 334-209, then that is much more significant than a trend that is 11-4.

I know I'm getting into statistics a little here, but they do play a very important role in sports betting (If you haven't already picked this up yet, I would encourage you to educate yourself as much as possible in the field of statistics).

Statistics will certainly help you to look at things much more rationally when it comes to sports gambling as well as baseball betting trends. Alright, alright, I'm starting to veer off course.

Back to baseball. As you can see from the point I'm making, these trends that you see everywhere on the internet have such a small sample size that they really are meaningless...in other words, I'd take them with a grain of salt in you overall handicapping philosophy.

I know I may sound contradictory here, but baseball betting trends with large sample sizes that are proven to be statistically significant or that actually have some substance behind them are the only ones that should be considered in your handicapping.

As we said before, the bigger the sample size the more significant. However, you're not going to find many baseball betting trends on the internet with large sample sizes.

This typically is going to have to be something you do on your own. Sharp handicappers aren't going to be there posting there best data because the value would disappear quickly.

However, if you haven't been building a baseball database for the last 5,10,15 years (obviously, most people haven't), then there are companies that sell this type of information and make it very easy to manipulate and sort.

One of my personal favorites is Stat Attack Sports. They have a very easy to use statistical database that is simple to sort and goes back to the 1999 season (they also have them for football and basketball as well).

There are others out there, but I really enjoy Stat Attacks ease of use. Whether you use Stat Attack, your own, or someone else's, it's very important to have one that can quickly sort through statistically significant trends.

For me personally, as you can tell, I put just about nothing into the baseball betting trends that you see posted everywhere on the internet. If anything, I would much rather fade these short term trends and look for mean reversion.

A lot of unsophisticated/public bettors put a lot of emphasis on following these trends and the sportsbooks are more than happy to accommodate. Just look on a lot of sportsbooks sites and they'll show you all kinds trends in game matchups.

That right there should tell you enough. Trust me, the sportsbooks aren't trying to help you out. They know the public loves them and their more than happy to feed it to them.

So hopefully you picked something up here concerning baseball betting trends. They may look good, they may seem pretty, but they ain't worth much unless you have a large sample that proves to be statistically significant or there's actually some substance behind the trend.

Let's move on to our next chapter, Baseball Betting Statistics. Now this is something that should hold much more weight in your handicapping than baseball betting trends (although I felt they needed to be addressed, obviously). As always, best of luck in all your sports betting endeavors.

Have A Question or Want to Add Your Own Thoughts ?

Have A Question or Want to Add Your Own Thoughts? Well let's hear it so we can all help each other become better handicappers.

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