Betting Overs and Unders on Baseball

Special thanks to client Andy R for giving me the idea to blog on this topic

Many clients are interested in betting on over and unders. If you are a beginner, all the sports we bet on include an over/under option. By example, in baseball if San Francisco is playing the LA Dodgers, the linesmakers will post a total of lets say 8 1/2.

Over/under bettors do not care who wins. They care about how many runs are scored in the game. Usually you will find in baseball that the totals are lower by about one run in the National League vs the American League because the National League does not have a designated hitter. In the National League, the pitcher must bat.

There are countless ways that people handicap totals. Some of them include pitching matchups, wind direction, altitude of a stadium, humidity, team stats and home umpires.

Looking at the home umpire is particularly interesting as umpires develop a reputation of having a tight strike zone or a forgiving stike zone. Unfortunately, for bettors this phenomenon does not hold steady over time. If you look at every umpire and see how they they have done over the last five years, you will not find one umpire that is consistently biased one way or the other.

Below is a link to a good article by Allen Moody that you can copy and paste. You might want to subscribe to his newsletter. It is free and informative.

I am not a very good totals handicapper. A fews years ago, I did a lot of over/under betting, but I did not get consistent results, so I moved away from that arena. I am sure that there are professionals that focus on totals, but I have never found one that is consistently profitable over time.

http://sportsgambling.about.com/od/baseballbetting/a/umpires.htm