Pitfalls of early MLB season betting
It’s still early in the MLB season, and the season is still unpredictable as new faces and changed lineups and rotations still work at coming together in perfect unity.
For baseball bettors this can wreck havoc on where to find value and their bankroll. But if they avoid a few costly pitfalls, they can still stand to make a good profit in these first uncertain weeks.
So, to help handicappers succeed, here are the five big mistakes bettors make betting the first few weeks of any new baseball season.
Number one, handicappers often times put too much emphasis on statistics, drawing conclusions based on a small sample size of a pitcher or batter’s performance. Every year players who get off to a hot start often fade by early May, and players who can’t hit a beach ball in April, end up chasing MVP honors by September.
That’s because hitters only make about 50-60 plate appearances in the first few weeks of a new season, and pitchers will likely only have two or three starts, so one bad outing could result in terrible stats.
The second pitfall to avoid is reading too much into early standings, as some teams will be more ready to start a new season than others. You can’t say a team is bad if they lose five out of 10 early on, like you can if they drop 60 out of 100 games by August. Fact is, baseball bettors shouldn’t even consider the standings in their betting analysis until the middle to end of May.
Next, handicappers want to ignore team’s with new managers, as it takes more than a couple of weeks for a team to gel with new systems. The players need to learn to respect a new manager, as he does his players, while he learns his roster’s capability and how best to use his men. A lot of bettors do not recognize this and it can be costly.
Finally, baseball bettors need to not rely on what a team did during the prior season and never bet too much early on.
Relying on last year’s team record or stats is irrelevant when it comes to the start of a new season. Bettors need to forget player and team reputations and only justify their bets based on the current status of the team, always betting conservatively.
The MLB season is long, and unless a baseball bettor has a very good reason to bet heavily on a particular game early in the season, then they might be better off to wait until they get a better sense of what is going on, what to expect and how to best profit from their knowledge.
Wagering on baseball takes patience, so handicappers should learn to wait until they have the biggest edge before they can really hit the betting hard.
