Standard/Default Odds For MLB Game

[Maverick22]

I am tweaking my odds Scraper. And there exist some games for which there are no odds(for various reasons).For these games I simply put (-1) for everything... Just to denote from the scraper"I dont know"

If i wanted to put some defaults odds for the game what would be good? This is only for games (which arent many) where my scraper was not able to extract clean odds.Something that represents

Basically...if there was a such thing as "standard/average" baseball odds...what would they be?

For a while i thought up this:

MoneyLineAway = -110
MoneyLineHome = -220
Total =8.5
And the odds for the total being maybe -220/-110(over/under)

Then i considered just making them all -110 for the moneyline and total odds...

What would you all recommend?

[sharpcat]

Not sure what your using the lines for but wouldn't you be better off simply either not using these games or pulling the data manually? just seems as if your estimated lines would severely flaw any database. There is no way of estimating an average line without taking opponents, starting pitchers, injuries, lineup, etc. into consideration.

[Maverick22]

Yea, You are probably right to ignore them.

I was considering adding the game odds to my program. I've had "marginal" success without using the odds...

The reason i decided against odds was because of how the lines are said to be manipulated. And I didn't want any calculations done on "misguided line data". So I opted to not use them... But rethinking it after some back-testing... And just wondering if it will improve my results...Even if by a little...

I've got 24 games that don't have lines for 2010 alone...And i don't EVEN want to fill that data in for the huge number that likely exist for 2009/08 So I may just drop those games from calculations.

Thanks!

[skrtelfan]

The basic line for an MLB game in which both teams are equal is roughly +117 or +118 for the away side and -117 or -118 for the home side, but if you can't find odds anywhere, I'd just ignore the games.

[mathdotcom]

You definitely want to ignore. There is no tradeoff here between sample size and efficient estimates. Increasing your sample size with biased information does not help you in any way.

[MadTiger]

You definitely want to ignore. There is no tradeoff here between sample size and efficient estimates. Increasing your sample size with biased information does not help you in any way.

Great post.