How to bet on baseball

The price is the pitchers

Most of a baseball line comes from who is starting. The same two teams can be a pick'em one night and a heavy favorite the next, and the difference is the man on the mound. That is why books ask about it.

When you bet a game, most books treat it as "listed pitchers" by default: the bet stands only if both named starters actually start. If one is scratched, the bet is void, or at some books it is repriced and you are asked again. You can usually choose "action" instead, which keeps the bet whoever pitches, at whatever the new price would have been. I'd always bet listed. If I liked the price because of a pitcher, I wanted my money back when he didn't pitch.

Cents, not points

A baseball line is quoted in cents. Say a favorite is -150 and the underdog +140: the gap between 150 and 140 is ten cents, a "dime line". As percentages those prices are 60.0 and 41.7, which add up to 101.7. On a football side at -110 each way the same sum is 104.8. The book takes far less on a baseball moneyline than on a spread.

The gap usually widens as the favorite gets bigger. At -250 and +210, twenty cents apart, the two sides add to 103.7. And it is wider again at many books that don't deal baseball seriously, which is the first reason to shop the price. A book dealing -150 and +130 on the same game adds up to 103.5, about double the cut, and all of the extra comes off the underdog.

The underdog is where baseball is different. At +140 you only need to win 41.7 percent of the time to break even, and in a sport where the worse team wins a lot of games, the public's habit of laying big prices on the famous teams is an expensive one. I'd look at the dog first on most nights.

The run line

The run line is baseball's spread, nearly always 1.5 runs, with the price doing the rest of the work. Say a favorite is -170 on the moneyline and -1.5 at +130 on the run line. $100 wins $130 on the run line, but only if the favorite wins by two or more. A one-run win is a winner on the moneyline and a loser on the run line, and one-run games are common in baseball. Neither price is free; they are two prices on two different questions.

Totals and the weather

Baseball totals sit in half-runs, and the book often moves the price before it moves the number: over 8.5 at -120 rather than over 9. At -120 you need 54.5 percent to break even, so read the price as well as the number.

The things that move a total are the ones the public skips: the bullpens, since most starters don't finish the game now and a tired bullpen is often the weak spot; the park; and the weather, the wind most of all. Early in the season the pitchers' numbers are small samples, and I'd trust last year's work and the scouting more than three starts.

When a game counts

Baseball is the sport with a rain rule. Most books need five innings for a moneyline bet to have action (four and a half if the home team is ahead), and the full nine, or eight and a half, for a total or a run line. A game called before then is no action, and a game suspended and finished another day may or may not count, depending on the book. It is in the house rules, and it is worth reading once.

The long season and October

Thirty teams playing 162 games each makes 2,430 regular-season games, nearly every day for six months. That is the attraction and the danger. A bettor with a small edge has plenty of chances to use it. A bettor without one pays the cut every day of the summer.

In the playoffs the rotations shorten, the best starters pitch more often, and the bullpens are used harder and earlier. The public money is bigger and the lines are tighter. I'd bet fewer playoff games than regular-season ones, not more.

Keep each bet to 1 or 2 percent of the bankroll. Over six months even a good baseball bettor has losing weeks, and plenty of them.