Posted Saturday, August 23, 2008 05:49 PM
I'm being lazy on Saturday afternoon and figured I would share a little "philosophy" I have on MLB totals. I actually stumbled upon this while I was trying to figure out a way to handicap Run Lines. I in no way have the stats on this to say that it will work every year, every season, for every team: however, it has picked totals at a 60% clip since the light bulb dangling over my head turned on about 2 months ago. If your skeptical about the 60% thing you can pull up my MLB totals record from Wagerline and check it out.
Its quite simple, actually. I will explain it in somewhat simple form so that even the brand new sports bettor can understand. It can be solved by asking one simple question....What are the factors involved in scoring runs?
Factor #1: A team needs baserunners to score runs. So, what stats can I look at to find out how many guys a team will get on base against another team? ERA?...no, AVG?...no, you need to get into some of the often overlooked stats. On Base Percentage (OBP) is one. A batter's OBP tells you how good he is at getting on base, not just by hits, but it factors in walks, hit by pitch and sacrafices. Now thats good for each batter, but their not up at the plate hitting off of a tee, so you need to find out how often the pitcher standing on the mound lets his opponents run the base paths. For this information you need to know the pitchers OBA (O... [More]