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There is a very good article in the recent Sports Illustrated Magazine about why there are so many No-Hitters in the last year. Hitting and offense are down. Strikeouts are at an all time high with 18.6% of plate appearances being KO's. Full article is here.
Wishing you a great week!
The Best Baseball Handicapper
Week in Review
The Baseball Handicapper had a terrible week going 1-6 and losing 12.12 units for the week. The week culminated with Saturday’s 0-3 performance where none of our selections even scored. Our worst week last year was 2-9 for -12.14 units; very similar numbers. We are now -16.52 units after 2 weeks. 7 Best Bets were released on the week, below our anticipated 10-15 range.
Money Management
Bad streaks like this are part of a Handicapper’s reality and we overcame extended losing periods in each of the last 2 years to end those seasons in profits. The key of course is to stay in the game, and this means managing your money by using a conservative percentage of bankroll per unit. If you have not done so, we recommend reading our article on Money Management. Properly managing your bankroll is vital to long term success in this business.
Pitching, Pitching, Pitching
The lack of hitting and scoring has been receiving a lot of press and rightly so. The National League teams are batting only .248, a number not seen since 1989. Their 4.13 Runs per Game scoring pace is the lowest since the 3.88 runs per game scored in 1992. NL Batters are striking out 7.37 times per game, a number equal to last year, which was the highest in history!
American League hitters are batting only .250, a number not seen since 1972. The scoring average of 4.24 is the lowest since 1981 and the 6.72 strikeouts per game are the second highest in AL history. Only the 6.74 posted in 2009 exceeds this number.
So what is causing this? One thought is that teams are carrying older players on their rosters, due to long term contracts, fan appeal or any of a number of reasons. So we extended our baseball analysis to investigate this dynamic. It turns out that in the National League average batter age of 29.1 is the same it was in 2000, with some years since being both above and below this average. The American League does carry a slightly older average, probably due to the Designated Hitter. The 29.5 average ages of batter for the AL is in fact the highest since the WWII years of 1944-46. The AL Average for batters from years 1994-2010 is 29. I will leave it up to the reader as to whether this additional ½ per year in age is statistically significant.
Can we take advantage of this trend?
Can we utilize this information in doing our Baseball Handicapping? Our Math Model and baseball betting strategy automatically factors in this trend in the computation of both the true odds and the anticipated total score. What about the Odds Maker? With less scoring one would expect more “unders” than “overs”. Unders are ahead, but at 244 to 240, the numbers are virtually even. Apparently the Odds Maker has also been adjusting the Over/Under odds to reflect this trend.
Wagering on Over/Unders
Next week we will cover the mechanics of betting on Baseball Totals, a wager that is more complicated than a straight bet on a Baseball Game and more complicated than betting Over/Unders in either Football or Basketball.
Wishing you a great week!
The Baseball Handicapper
Week #Beg DateEnd Date Best BetsWinsLosesTiesUnitsRunning
Total14/25/20105/1/20104130-4.40-4.40
Season Totals4130-4.40
All Stats and Records are through games of Sunday, May 1st
Week in Review
We released picks for the first time in 2011 and started the year with a losing week going 1-3. Three games (1-2) were decided in the final inning of the game, with Florida and St. Louis blowing early 4-0 leads in 2 of these losses. As more games are having the required starts for each pitcher we expect to offer a larger quantity of picks this coming week.
Weekly Trends
This was a big week for underdogs. Dogs went 52-36 (59%) as compared with the week before where favorites won 64%. Dogs and Favorites are now an even .500 (203-203) in his young season. You would be plus a whopping 44 units if you had played every underdog, every day, as you are taking a premium on each wager. The numbers hold very close whether on the Road or at Home. Favorites winning only 50% is a trend that will not continue throughout the season. You can look for that number to rise to somewhere between 55 and 60%.
Surprises in April
In the American League the biggest surprise has to be the Cleveland Indians. At 19-8 the Tribe is in First Place in the AL Central Division and has the best record in all of Baseball. The amazing stat is their 13 game Home winning streak where they are now 13-2! The Indians where 38-43 at Home last year.
The Minnesota Twins are the big negative surprise thus far in 2011. The Twins were 94-68 in 2010 and find themselves 9-18 thus far in 2011. They are currently doing everything wrong, as they are last in the AL in both hitting (Batting Average) and pitching (ERA).
The Phillies have the best record in the NL, with no surprise there. Overachievers include Florida and Colorado, both at 17-9. Last year’s darlings, the San Francisco Giants and San Diego Padres, are clearing underachieving. The Giants won 92 regular season games last year and the Padres 90. In 2011 San Fran is 13-14 and the Padres are 11-17. San Diego leads the NL in pitching (lowest in ERA) but finds themselves last in hitting (.211 Batting Average). I thought good pitching was supposed to beat good hitting!
All teams are within the expected range of the .333 and .667 winning percentages.
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Wishing you a great week!The Baseball Handicapper