The key to being successful if you are going to bet on baseball is to find value. Value is the difference between the price you are getting with the odds and the true chances of a team winning.
For instance, you think a team has a 50% chance of winning a game. Getting +110 on the team, that’s a great bet and you should make your wager. If you are getting -110 on that team, that means you have a negative expectation and should not.
You can use our money line conversion chart to look up the percentage (of winning) needed for a team to be a value play.
Best Baseball Underdog Betting Systems, Formula & Strategies to Profit
Last Five Year’s Results
Going back over the last five years (regular season only) you will find the following results for underdogs and favorites:
Favorites: 7,4695-5,530 (57.5%) Avg. Line: -142.6
Underdogs: 4,617-6,582 (41.2%) Avg. Line: +136.8
First glance betting on favorites looks great, as they have won the game 57.5% of the time. That would be a great win rate if you were betting the spread with a standard juice (-110). The problem is the juice eats you up. If you would have bet $100 on every favorite during this stretch, you would be down over $7,000.
Betting underdogs blindly also is a poor strategy. The key is to look for situations and systems where the underdog has a profitable track record. Luck for you, I have five of the best strategies to help you win more of your wagers this season.
Situation #1 – April Underdogs
One of my favorite times to back underdogs is early in the year, as oddsmakers are still adjusting to the new rosters. This is also the only time of the year where all 30 teams are in the mix.
By the time June hits, we have a pretty clear idea of who is a contender and who isn’t. There’s simply a lot more incentive for bad teams to play hard early in the season and if you back over the years, you can see there’s a lot of value in focusing in on the dogs in the month of April.
Over the last 10 years, underdogs in the month of April have gone 1,487-1,866. While that comes out to a mere 44.43% win rate, the average odds in these games is +131.3, which turns into a ROI (return on investment) of +1.0% and profit of $3,114 on a simple $100 wager.
The key when you find a strong angle like we have here with underdogs, is to try and spot situations where they excel.
A profitable situation that I have found is underdogs (+105 or more) in the month of April, who have lost the first two games of a series and were also an underdog in the most recent loss. Coming into the 2017 season, this system has gone 97-110 (46.9%) over the last 10 seasons with an average line of +141.1 and impressive ROI of +12.0%.
Situation #2 – Early Season Road Dogs
Another underdog system that I have found that has been profitable over the years in the early months of April and May, is road underdogs of +100 to +150 who are coming off a loss with a losing overall record against a team with a winning record.
These underdogs have a SU record of 448-483 (48.1%) over the last 10 years with average odds of +123.2 and ROI of 7.2%.
Situation #3 – Divisional Underdogs
There is no doubt that, despite the 162 game MLB schedule, division games have a lot more meaning to them. The teams within the division are rivals.
While there are 30 teams in Major League Baseball, division games make up just about half of a team’s schedule, or 76 games per year.
So the games become a focal point and, under the right set of circumstances, small to medium home dog can deliver big profits!
For the table below I looked at division home dogs with a line of +100 to +145, who lost Game 1 of a series as a home favorite (takes the focus off away team, and onto home team) and have a record of .500 or worse on the season.
Resourse: https://boydsbets.com/betting-underdogs-in-baseball/