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 (On Base Against). This is the same stat as OBP but for the pitcher. If you don't want to go digging for this stat, or don't have time everyday to find this stat (it is usually buried on the 2nd or 3rd page of a pitchers stats depending on where you look) you can use WHIP in place of it. The pitcher's WHIP is usually more readily available to you and will give you a similar picture as the OBA. Also, it is almost impossible to find a Bullpen OBA. If you compare the TEAM OBP with the Starting Pitchers OBA or WHIP and the Bullpen's OBA or WHIP, this will give you an idea of whether there will be a merry-go-round or tumble-weeds going on the bases.
Factor #2: How well does the team hit with RISP? So now we have baserunners, how are we gonna score them? There are lots of stats that can be used in this situation, including the one's we just used to determine the possibility of baserunners. What I use is the teams AVG with RISP. Why not OBP? Well, it wouldn't be bad at all to use the teams OBP with RISP, however, in this situation I don't want to include BB's or HBP. A walk or a hit batter will only score runs if the bases are loaded, and more often than not they aren't. If you go into any stats page (mlb.com,espn, yahoo! sports) you will be able to click on a player or team and filter their stats to get this number. It is usually located under the "Situational" tab. If you have trouble finding it, let me know and I can tell you how to get there. If you compare this stat with the SP's AVG against with RISP you can get a good idea of how easy it will be for a team to score runs. I left out the bullpen! Again, total Bullpen stats are tricky. Not everyone listed in the bullpen is available, and of the guys that are available only about 2 will get the call on average. For this I just use the total AVAILABLE bullpen's WHIP from the Covers matchup page. At least this will give you an average WHIP of all the guys out there that could get the call in the late innings.
So, in closing this is what I'm looking at when I'm handicapping MLB totals:
Team OBP+ SP OBA or WHIP + BP OBA or WHIP = Possibility of Baserunners
Team AVG w/RISP + SP AVG w/RISP + BP WHIP = Possibility of Runs scored
I hope this at least helps more people than it confuses. I have found it has improved my winning percentage on totals quite a bit and gives me a pretty good picture of how the game is going to unfold (most games at least). Comments or other info pertaining to this are always appreciated.