Unoriginal idea, anyone know though?

[Fiasco]

with interleague play going on, pitchers have often never faced their oppenents

does anyone know if it is profitable to take the under first 5 in these games where both pitchers haven't seen the opponents batters?

ex. NYY vs ATL tonight

[Willie Bee]

Good thought, one would certainly think it would be better playing the starters in the first half of the game in these situations. I'll see what I can dig up. I'm guessing it might not be broken down specifically for interleague play, just when two pitchers face off against each other and pitching against the hitters for a first time.

[pavyracer]

They probably haven't seen the bullpens either. I'd rather take the game under instead because you are getting 1/2 an inning back if the home team is up.
For example, under 5 in 5 innings is not as good as under 10 in 8.5 innings

[Fiasco]

True Pavy but most of the time it's first five under 5, game under 9.5 or at least it's that way 50 percent of the time

I haven't looked much into this but when I was capping the yankees game today I just noticed that Mclouth was the only brave to have faced joba and he went 0-3 against him, and no yankee had faced Kawakami

1 run was scored in the first 5 tonight and only 2-3 hits for either side... (one game means nothing though)

I may look further into it, was just wondering if anyone had backtested this idea before as I have a hard time believing I am one of the few to think of it... (seems rather obvious)

[pavyracer]

True Pavy but most of the time it's first five under 5, game under 9.5 or at least it's that way 50 percent of the time

I haven't looked much into this but when I was capping the yankees game today I just noticed that Mclouth was the only brave to have faced joba and he went 0-3 against him, and no yankee had faced Kawakami

1 run was scored in the first 5 tonight and only 2-3 hits for either side... (one game means nothing though)

I may look further into it, was just wondering if anyone had backtested this idea before as I have a hard time believing I am one of the few to think of it... (seems rather obvious)

OK..for under 5 FF to cash you need basically only 4 runs to be scored in 10 innings.

For under 9.5 in 9 innings you need 9 runs to be scored in 18 or 17 innings if the home team leads.

4/10 =0.4
9/18 = 0.5
9/17 = 0.53

You can see that the game under gives you a 0.1-0.13 run advantage. This is why the game under is a better choice than FF under.