Handicapping a Baseball Game

So what actually goes into handicapping a baseball game? If you ask me, quite a bit...and what we'll cover here is everything I look at when actually handicapping a baseball game (power ratings, creating my own line, win probabilities, etc).

I still think it's amazing how so many people think there's some kind of top secret system/formula to winning at betting on sports...when in reality, it comes down hard work and research.

While we did give a brief overview of baseball betting systems in our previous chapter, I feel power ratings and win probabilities should be the foundation when handicapping a baseball game...this is just my opinion, but you'll find plenty of others who agree.

What we'd like to do here is take you through a simple process of creating your own ratings and how that can be applied to developing win probabilities...now how accurate they are is up to you.

We'll walk you through the process, but it's up to you how you want to tweak the numbers to hopefully find some profitable probabilities when handicapping a baseball game. It's probably much easier said than done, but I can assure you it can be accomplished.

As I've stated many times, their are plenty of successful baseball handicappers that continually turn a profit year in and year out. None of them are going to tell you there secrets because the value would then be diminished (so don't believe anybody that tries to sell you otherwise).

If you want to be successful, you can either follow a professional handicapper (which will work for a while) or create your own handicapping strategy. We'll give you the basics to get you going in the right direction for handicapping a baseball game.

So let's look at your creating your own baseball betting system (power ratings) for two opponents and then cover a few of the more popular formulas that can be applied to give you an estimated win probability.

After we've done this, we'll then go over the other factors that you can take into account before considering a side or total a bet. Again though, it's up to you how detailed you want to get when actually handicapping a baseball game.

Again, I wouldn't necessarily call this a baseball betting system, but rather a vital technique for handicapping a baseball game. What we basically want to do is compare one teams offense to that of another teams pitching (and vice versa) to create the amount of runs we estimate each team scoring.

We're going to look at it in it's most simple form, but you can certainly get as detailed as you'd like...again though, I can assure you that every long term successful handicapper has a process similar to this that he/she starts from everyday when looking for possible plays.

The first thing we need to do is find out an offensive rating for each team. The easiest way to do that is to compare each teams OTS, as described in our Baseball Betting Statistics chapter, to the overall league average.

For instance, if the league average for OTS is .1433 and Team A is .1505, then we would take .1505/1433 to get 1.05. This roughly tells us that Team A has an overall offense 5% above the league average. We'll go ahead and say that team B's offensive number is .99.

Again, I'm letting OTS be the determinant to an overall offensive number. There are many other offensive statistics you can choose from, but I feel this one to be quite accurate when developing an offensive power rating.

Now that you have established this number for each team, then come the adjustments. Now I won't go into great detail of the adjustments, but rather go through a list of factors that could cause you to adjust the offensive rating either up or down. Here's a list of factors that must be accounted for in the offensive rating:

- Are they facing a right handed or left handed starting pitcher in this game? You then must calculate their OTS for going against a right or lefty and compare it to the league average to come up with a rating.

When I say league average, it's really up to you how detailed you want to get. You can just do overall league average (as we did before) or you break it down into league average versus righties/lefites, break it down even further into league average versus righties/lefties in the ballpark the game is being played...etc.

You get the point. You can get as detailed and intricate as you want...the more you do, the more accurate your offensive rating will be for each team and the better you'll become at handicapping a baseball game. We're just giving you the basics here.

Back to the point. You're going to have a new rating that may be above or below the original and it's up to you to determine how much it should be adjusted. You also need to have an estimation of how long the starter will be in the game along with platoon splits and make adjustments accordingly.

- Park factor must also be figured. You should have an updated list of each park factor and account for that within the offensive ratings as well.

- Home/away splits. Does a team perform much different at home compared to on the road?

Other factors that may affect offensive rating are wind direction, injuries, recent performance, resting players...etc. The list can go on and on, but I think you probably get what I'm saying. You can adjust the numbers how you see fit from either statistical or subjective factors.

So after everything has been accounted for, you should have an offensive rating for each team. To make this example easy, we'll just use the original numbers in our calculations: 1.05 for Team A and .99 for Team B.

Besides from subjectively evaluating the pitchers, just as we did with the offense, we want to first focus on the starting pitchers numbers. The first step you have to take is estimating how many innings the starting pitcher will go and then estimate the number of runs he'll allow in those innings pitched.

As far as estimating how far the starter will go, I would first look at the average innings pitched per game in that season for that particular pitcher. From there you can add or subtract innings depending on how he matches up against the offense, recent meetings, park factors, recent form...etc.

Let's say you've come to the conclusion that you expect this pitcher to go 6 innings. Well, now it's time to estimate the number of runs he will give up. We'll do this by looking at the pitching statistics for that pitcher.

Most importantly I would focus on his ERA for the last 5 outings, FIP ERA, xERA, and Quick ERA, and compare them to his overall ERA. For me personally, I put the most weight into the xERA. You'll also want to see how this pitcher has fared in previous meetings with the team, if they've been matched up earlier in the year.

Once you have all of this information, you're now ready to estimate this pitchers ERA for the game. There are countless ways to come to this number whether it's taking the average of the ERA's, assigning different weights to the ERA's and then getting an average, or just subjectivity coming up with a number.

Again you can get as far down to the nitty gritty as you'd like. The point is to just come up with an accurate number when it comes to the pitching aspect of handicapping a baseball game.

Let's say after we've examined the numbers that we expect this pitcher to have a 4.95 ERA for this game. Well, now we have to figure out how many runs that equates to in 6 innings since that is our estimate of how long he will pitch. It comes to 3.30 runs ((4.95/9) * 6)) against the average offense.

Now we have to figure out the same thing for the bullpen...which can be a little more difficult. If you expect the starter to go 6 innings, then you'll probably have a good idea who would pitch the 7th, 8th, and 9th...especially with a lead.

However, it's obviously not always that easy. You must look at how the bullpen has been worked lately and who you expect to be available. Here are 3 ways to estimate the ERA for a bullpen when handicapping a baseball game:

1.) Just take the overall bullpen ERA.
2.) Average out the ERA of who you believe to be available.
3.) Average out the ERA of who you believe will pitch the 7th, 8th, or 9th.

Obviously, there's plenty of other ways, but these will at least give you a starting point. Again, the number you come up with may need to adjusted for other factors as well...recent performance, who is rested, etc.

Once you've developed that number, we then have to find out how many runs that equates to in the final 3 innings. For this example, let's say we've estimated a bullpen ERA of 3.95. Over 3 innings of work, that would equal 1.32 runs.

So now we'll add the amount of runs we expect the starter to give up (3.30) to that of the relievers (1.32) and we come up with 4.62 runs for the game. We now have to compare that to the league average ERA to come up with our pitcher power rating.

As I've already said about 10 times in our Handicapping a Baseball Game chapter, it's up to you how detailed you want to get when we say a "league average" ERA, but for simplicity sake, we'll let it refer to the overall ERA for this particular league. We'll use 4.28 runs for a league average.

To get the pitching power rating, we'll take the 4.62 runs we've estimated and divide it by the league average of 4.28 to get 1.08. This is basically telling us that this teams pitching is expected to be 8% worse than the league average.

In this example team A will have a defensive power rating of 1.08 and team B will have one of 1.07. So now that we have both our offensive and defensive power ratings, our next step in handicapping a baseball game is estimating the number of runs each team will score.

Click here to move on to Part Two of our Handicapping a Baseball Game chapter.

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Putting It All Together: Handicapping a Baseball Game

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Putting It All Together:
Handicapping a Baseball Game