Stats mean nothing in baseball, absolutely nothing!

[bettilimbroke999]

In predicting an individual game, it all comes down to one of the batters squaring one pitch out of the park for 2 or 3 runs, key errors (puts men on base, usually advances runner(s) and essentially gives them extra outs) or getting lucky and hitting some pitches down the line, you can average out the number of times that happens but never even close to accurate enough to be able to determine which side is the right side to take, if anyone makes money consistently betting on MLB year after year I'd like to meet them, the only system that even makes any sense is blindly taking all the underdogs but over time not even sure that works

[MonkeyF0cker]

They mean nothing other than everything.

[Ganchrow]

In predicting an individual game, it all comes down to one of the batters squaring one pitch out of the park for 2 or 3 runs, key errors (puts mean on base, usually advances runner(s) and eliminates an out) or getting lucky and hitting some pitches down the line, you can average out the number of times that happens but never even close to accurate enough to be able to determine which side is the right side to take,

I posted the following a while back:

calculations alone can't account for a critical infield error, a mysterious blown whistle, or whatever other in-game factors that have no numbers attached to them can provide. Nevertheless theres no denying the sexiness of trying to live up a dream of being a sports fan and picking winners daily

I think the above quote nicely exemplifies the primary difference in philosophy between recreational and (quantitative) advantage bettors.

A sporting event is by its very nature chaotic, associated with an inherent level of essentially irreducible entropy. The goal of the advantage bettor isn't so much to delve in to the entropic, but rather to come up with broadly scoped probability measures that seek to estimate the likelihood of a given outcome, conditioned on the available data.

A good analogy might be a fair coin-flip where a player is able to bet heads at +110 for an EV of +5%. Now let's say a player makes a +110 bet on heads, the coin is flipped and it comes up tails.

An advantage player might reason, "OK I knew I had only a 50% probability of winning going into this bet, I know the coin-flip was fair, offer the bet to me again and I'll make the bet again."

A recreational player however, perhaps overly concerned with the excitement of the bet itself, might watch the flip in super slo-mo. He sees the coin start off tails side up, make 7.5 rotations as it ascends, and on the way down just as it looks almost certain to land heads, a door down the hall is slammed shut, creating a tiny, almost imperceptible wind that knocks a small butterfly into the tails side of the coin, causing it, at almost the last moment to land heads side down.

The recreational bettor slams his fist in disgust and says, "This is unreal! I was about to win that bet. How could I have possibly known that that door was going to slam at exactly the moment that the butterfly was flying by. There are just way too many factors at play! The outcome of a coin-flip can't be predicted and there's no way anyone can make money doing this!"

To an extent the recreational is quite right. The precise outcome of a fair coin-flip can't be predicted with certainty. There's no reasonable way in which that slammed door or that butterfly could have be foreseen, or just as importantly, what their impact on the final result would have been even could they have been foreseen.

This is a big reason why, all else being equal, "critical infield errors" or "mysterious blown whistles" don't bother me personally. I'm not trying to predict such essentially "chaotic" subevents and fully realize that they largely can't be predicted past a certain, very generic point. I don't watch games in super slo-mo, because I don't really care for the purposes of a single bet whether I ultimately won or lost due to my having gotten lucky or unlucky.

For an advantage bettor wagering shouldn't be about "picking winners" per se but rather about associating probabilities with various outcomes. Equipped with these initial "prior" probability estimates, advantage bettors should then utilize market evidence (generally in the form of current broad-based market prices) to infer "posterior" probabilities by a process known as "Bayesian inference". These posterior probabilities, which when taken in conjunction with available prices (that, depending upon your bookie, may differ from the broad-based market price), determine edge and then ultimately bet size.

That's it. That's the entire (quantitative) advantage betting game in a nutshell. Sure, sometimes the "model price" might itself only be a function of the "market price" (such that the posterior and prior probabilities are equivalent), such as in the case of say, betting Bowl underdog of 7+ points prior to New Year's (a strategy which, by the way, I'm by no means way endorsing), but the above is really the essence of advantage betting.

When I bet the Pittsburgh run line last night at +105 and +102 I was no more "predicting" the outcome of the game in any meaningful sense than the earlier hypothetical advantage player betting on heads at +110 was "predicting" the outcome the fair coin-flip.

Currently I believe Pit+1.5 to be fairly valued at about 50.52% (a line of roughly -102.1), implying edges of about 3.56% and 2.04% on my bets at +105 and +102, respectively. As game time approaches, both those estimates (as well as available prices) are likely to change and in response my programs will likely be placing additional bets -- maybe some on the Tampa RL, or on either of the alternate run lines, or or either of the money lines, or on the game or team totals -- but all the while paying close attention not only to my expected value but also to my underlying risk.

I'm going out tonight around 6PM, a good hour before the PIT/TB game starts, I'm sure I'll have no idea about my net exposure to any aspect of the game, and won't know, even if I happen to see the final score, whether I've made or lost money on the event.

Advantage sports betting is all about placing +EV bets while keeping tight control over the reins of risk (implying that -EV are occasionally in order); that the bets' outcomes happen to be based on sporting events is, at least for me, little more than an afterthought. Yeah, so a bottom of the 9th inning grand slam with no outs happened to cost me a visitor +1.5 bet ... but even if I actually knew that, my response could be only, "So what? Shit just sometimes happens." But you know what ... sometimes it happens the other way, too.

So concern yourself with trying to find coin-flips at +110 and just ignore the butterflies and slamming doors. You shouldn't in general be trying to "predict winners", you should be trying to estimate probabilities.

[jjgold]

Stats do not factor in turnovers, bad coaching, mistakes, injuries which usually determine the betting outcome of events.

[bettilimbroke999]

Mean absolutely zero, why do you think the RL is so much better odds than the ML, bc a run is 25-30% on average of a pitchers ERA, all you need to do is hit one ball down the line for a double, any MLB batter squares one pitch for a homerun, one error or 50 other scenarios to produce one run that statiscally shouldn't have been there and you've just thrown the line off by a fukin ton, no way to predict any of that in a particular game, Pujols goes 3-3 tonight then goes 0-3 tomorrow, he's batting .500 statistically but he's simply playing perfect one game and swinging like grandmother the next odds are 50 50 you bet him when he was a 1.000 batter or a .000 batter

[MonkeyF0cker]

Mean absolutely zero, why do you think the RL is so much better odds than the ML, bc a run is 25-30% on average of a pitchers ERA, all you need to do is hit one ball down the line for a double, any MLB batter squares one pitch for a homerun, one error or 50 other scenarios to produce one run that statiscally shouldn't have been there and you've just thrown the line off by a fukin ton, no way to predict any of that in a particular game, Pujols goes 3-3 tonight then goes 0-3 tomorrow, he's batting .500 statistically but he's simply playing perfect one game and swinging like grandmother the next odds are 50 50 you bet him when he was a 1.000 batter or a .000 batter

That statement right there proves you know absolutely nothing about statistics. Zero.

[Ganchrow]

Mean absolutely zero, why do you think the RL is so much better odds than the ML,

A -1½ run line on a given game is offered at higher payout odds than a money line on a same game for the simple reason that the latter bet wins with higher probability than the former.

[bettilimbroke999]

Stats do not factor in turnovers, bad coaching, mistakes, injuries which usually determine the betting outcome of events.

I agree with this but baseball is much different, luck is a bigger factor in this sport than any other except for soccer where they just blindly kick towards the goal and 1 gets by every 45 mins or so just by the ball happening to find a hole or deflecting the right way and opening up an opportunity to score (hell you cant even run by the defenders in soccer or they call some fukin crazy ass offsides rule which is a joke when you're watchin your guy run wide open towards the goal and about to cash your bet )

You try to hit the ball hard you're not even trying to control a direction bc no ones that good to control where they hit a 95 mph fastball you're just hoping to hit it hard and happen to square it or hit it where they aint, ur talkin about a hitting something moving 95 mph that's like 2 inches wide, I mean can you not see how this is prone to great swings in results from game to game

[MonkeyF0cker]

I agree with this but baseball is much different, luck is a bigger factor in this sport than any other except for soccer where they just blindly kick towards the goal and 1 gets by every 45 mins or so just by the ball happening to find a hole or deflecting the right way and opening up an opportunity to score (hell you cant even run by the defenders in soccer or they call some fukin crazy ass offsides rule which is a joke when you're watch a guy run wide open towards the goal and about to cash your bet )

Its just you just try to hit the ball hard you're not even trying to control a direction bc no ones that good to control where they hit a 95 mph fastball you're just hoping to hit it hard and happen to square it or hit it where they aint, ur talkin about a hitting something moving 95 mph that's like 2 inches wide, I mean can you not see how this is prone to great swings in results from game to game

Holy crap. You know nothing about baseball either. Go figure.

[bettilimbroke999]

Ganch we understand a coinflip is 50% and if you're getting +110 that's a good bet that's not very hard to calculate what the odds should be 1/2 time heads 1/2 time tails in the long run, baseball is far from this simple to calculate the true line

[tacomax]

Holy crap. You know nothing about baseball either.

Nor soccer, it seems.

[MonkeyF0cker]

But if you were to "calculate the true line," what do you think you'd use to go about doing so?

[MonkeyF0cker]

Nor soccer, it seems.

LOL. True.

[bettilimbroke999]

Holy crap. You know nothing about baseball either. Go figure.

I do that's the sad thing I've watched this crap the last 4 years and lost every year

[bettilimbroke999]

But if you were to "calculate the true line," what do you think you'd use to go about doing so?

I guess I hear what you're sayin Im just not sure how you transfer all the stats in baseball to a true line, maybe some advanced perfect computer program could do it but your average MLB bettor doesn't have a prayer of doing this so it's a moot point

[MonkeyF0cker]

I do that's the sad thing I've watched this crap the last 4 years and lost every year

I'm sure you are. You simply don't understand how to handicap.

[MonkeyF0cker]

I guess I hear what you're sayin Im just not sure how you transfer all the stats in baseball to a true line, maybe some advanced perfect computer program could do it but your average MLB bettor doesn't have a prayer of doing this so it's a moot point

The average MLB bettor isn't going to win. The average bettor isn't going to win. Period.

[bettilimbroke999]

Hmm alrighty then lol

[tacomax]

I guess I hear what you're sayin Im just not sure how you transfer all the stats in baseball to a true line, maybe some advanced perfect computer program could do it but your average MLB bettor doesn't have a prayer of doing this so it's a moot point

Even mastering the concept of basic regression analysis - not some advanced perfect computer program - will put you well above the average MLB bettor.

[bettilimbroke999]

I just wish that they didn't have this basically 3 month stretch of only MLB, sucks not having any options of other sports Im seemingly better at capping but it's all good, I wish u could just pay 100 bucks for a baseball model that you could enter all the stats into and get the right line everytime and know you were going to win over time

[englishmike]

I just wish that they didn't have this basically 3 month stretch of only MLB, sucks not having any options of other sports Im seemingly better at capping but it's all good, I wish u could just pay 100 bucks for a baseball model that you could enter all the stats into and get the right line everytime and know you were going to win over time

Golf, Soccer, Rugby, Cricket, Boxing, MMA, Darts, Tennis, Aussie rules Football, Athletics, Horses, Dogs, Financials, Nascar, F1 Grand Prix, Superbikes, Vollyball, Lacrosse....

What sort of betting oppurtunities were you specifically looking for sir?

[pavyracer]

You forgot WNBA Mike.

[arda10k]

well yeah, anything can happen in baseball, but sometimes lineup average vs. opposing pitcher history can mean something, but only sometimes..

[Number Freak]

In predicting an individual game, it all comes down to one of the batters squaring one pitch out of the park for 2 or 3 runs, key errors (puts men on base, usually advances runner(s) and essentially gives them extra outs) or getting lucky and hitting some pitches down the line, you can average out the number of times that happens but never even close to accurate enough to be able to determine which side is the right side to take, if anyone makes money consistently betting on MLB year after year I'd like to meet them, the only system that even makes any sense is blindly taking all the underdogs but over time not even sure that works

I have to whole-heartedly disagree. I'm 21-2 with an exclusively statistical prediction model. I don't create a line either, I focus on the ebb and flow of each team and fade the slumps. IMO, you need to have several factors working to your advantage to see strong results.

[Chi_archie]

for any one game...stats might be meaningless.... but we are looking for 500-1000 mlb plays every year for X number of years. Plugging stats into systems and models is one of the best long term strategy for determining how players will perform in the future.

you can't get caught up in the game to game, day to day, week to week, or month to month ups and downs.... if you are in this for the long haul, you have to be patient and if you are betting good numbers and you have even a small edge on the majority of your games.... things should shake out well over the long term

[Wrecktangle]

...why try to convince these people? We need more sheep...

[bettilimbroke999]

I tell ya what we need on this site is like a baseball handicapping school, like videos from Justin or something that gives us an idea of what the pros do to cap MLB bc I'm tellin ya just when u think you got your bet locked up some guy puts a 2 run homer out of the park with 2 outs and your just fukin stunned that a team that's scored 1 run in 8 innings can score two with 1 bad pitch or lucky swing, hell I've seen many times pitches that were balls put out of the park you cant even blame the pitcher it's just bad luck I guess.

Why do you think books offer such low juice on MLB, bc they know no one can accurately predict when a pitcher/batters gonna be hot or cold, above or below their season avg, so even with almost no juice its extremely difficult to win at, but I'd be interested in hearing how the pros (if there are any MLB pros) go about capping MLB

I can understand since SBR is sponsored by the books why they wouldn't want to put up videos like that but I feel just a few tips to point beginner MLB cappers such as myself in the right direction wouldn't upset the sponsors but maybe it would who knows

[tacomax]

I tell ya what we need on this site is like a baseball handicapping school, like videos from Justin or something that gives us an idea of what the pros do to cap MLB bc I'm tellin ya just when u think you got your bet locked up some guy puts a 2 run homer out of the park with 2 outs and your just fukin stunned that a team that's scored 1 run in 8 innings can score two with 1 bad pitch or lucky swing, hell I've seen many times pitches that were balls put out of the park you cant even blame the pitcher it's just bad luck I guess.

You keep assuming that these incidences are down to luck, or random variation. While that may not be strictly true, there is a large element of luck in a bottom of the 9th 2 out walk off grand slam loss for your bet. On the basis that there is a large element of random variation in these type of plays, why do you assume you get the bad end of the lucky play each time? Do you not consider the times where a bottom of the 9th 2 out walk off grand slam makes your bet a winner?

I can understand since SBR is sponsored by the books why they wouldn't want to put up videos like that but I feel just a few tips to point beginner MLB cappers such as myself in the right direction wouldn't upset the sponsors but maybe it would who knows

Problem is, generally people here just don't listen. One poster recently posted how you can make an easy $10K in a year with a minimum bankroll. The guy he told either didn't believe him or thought that the 5 minutes a day it would take to do this was far too much effort.

[MonkeyF0cker]

You keep assuming that these incidences are down to luck, or random variation. While that may not be strictly true, there is a large element of luck in a bottom of the 9th 2 out walk off grand slam loss for your bet. On the basis that there is a large element of random variation in these type of plays, why do you assume you get the bad end of the lucky play each time? Do you not consider the times where a bottom of the 9th 2 out walk off grand slam makes your bet a winner?

I'm sort of curious why he thinks a grand slam in the bottom of the 9th is lucky compared to a grand slam in the bottom of the 1st...

[bettilimbroke999]

Both are equally lucky except if it happens in the 9th and you were basically countin ur bet a win it tends to hurt more but you're right both are equally lucky and both equally impossible to predict

[tacomax]

Both are equally lucky except if it happens in the 9th and you were basically countin ur bet a win it tends to hurt more but you're right both are equally lucky and both equally impossible to predict

It's a 2-2 ballgame in the 9th inning, both teams start from the top of the order and have a similar batting performance. The closer for the away team has a 9.06 ERA 1-7 record and has blown 3 saves in the past week. The closer for the home team has a 1.23 ERA 4-1 record and has yet to blow a save all season.

Now lets's suppose that we find out that one of the two teams hits a 2 out grand slam but we don't know which one. By your reckoning, you'd be unable to have an educated guess which team scored it since the occurrence is equally lucky and both equally impossible to predict. Correct? Or, after looking at the stats, can you make an educated guess?

[Bread]

Taco (lol) you don't know anything about gambling. You're a professional dick. Leave the sports wagering to us pros.

[tacomax]

yeah, me no pro.

[pavyracer]

Stats in baseball mean nothing especially ERA's and batting average. If one pitcher has an ERA of 3.0 but he pitched a shutout and one with 6 ER's how do you cap his next game? He can throw another shutout or get shelled again. A batting average of .350 doesn't mean anything if his team lost the game. They could have been all singles and no runs scored. Flipping a coin is the best way to gauge stats. How man times this year the Yankees lost as -250 favs when the stats clearly stated they had the best pitcher and the best hitters in the game?

[oiler]

i know thats right cause last year santana was usually anywhere from 300-400 on a game and he had his worst year in baseball