When betting on baseball games, you’ll want to find reasons for choosing which side or total to wager on. After all, baseball is not a crap shoot. There are reasons for why one result happens instead of another result. Betting is about determining what those results will be before they come to be.
Trends can provide good reasoning for choosing one side or total over another. Because a team’s starting pitcher is going to do the most to influence the outcome of a given game, we should focus especially on pitcher trends.
To emphasize this point: consider that a batter might see four at-bats in a given game. But a pitcher might see 30 batters in a given game. He’ll throw maybe 90 pitches, whereas a single batter might see ten pitches.
A starting pitcher will exert a stronger influence than other players over the outcome of a given game because he’ll be more involved in it. Because starting pitchers are so important and because trends are so valuable in deciding what we should bet, we should talk about starting pitcher trends before betting on them at MLB betting sites.
More On What A Trend Is
Let’s be crystal clear about what we mean by starting pitcher trends.
A trend is a tendency. A trend describes what tends to take place.
For example, if a starting pitcher’s career record in a given ballpark is 5-5, then we’re not seeing a trend. Because this piece of information does not constitute a trend, we can’t glean anything of value from it. It doesn’t tell us something useful that we can learn and that we can use to predict future games in which that starting pitcher pitches in that ballpark.
However, if, say, Jose Berrios is 6-1 in nine starts in his career in Camden Yards (where the Orioles play), then that is a trend.
This record constitutes a trend because it says what tends to happen: what tends to happen when Berrios pitches in Baltimore’s venue is that Berrios tends to collect the win.
Trends Don’t Stand Alone
The substantive value of trends is evident in the fact that they can be described and explained. Trends are valuable because they are part of a bigger picture.
When we are betting on baseball games, we don’t just want to think about the starting pitchers. While they’re the most important player, they’re also a mere part of a larger picture.
To take the Berrios example, it’s not just the case that Berrios tends to win. If this were so, then it could be that he’s been lucky in Camden Yards – perhaps his lineup just happens to perform well when he pitches in this venue. The trend, by itself, therefore doesn’t say much. But it says a lot more when we look into details about it.
Berrios, for example, not only has a good record when pitching in the Orioles’ venue. His career ERA there is 2.61. This stat helps explain how the trend of his collecting the win in six of nine career starts in Camden Yards connects to the bigger picture of his team’s games against Baltimore.
He does not simply collect the win. When pitching in their venue, he tends to thrive against Baltimore’s batters. Rather than his team magically happening to find ways to win when he pitches there, he does a great job of limiting runs, which puts his team in a greater position to win.
We see how trends can point us in the right direction.
In this case, we saw the trend about Berrios’ tendency to win in Baltimore, and this trend took us to details – details that elaborate upon the trend – that express Berrios’ tendency to do well against Orioles batters in their venue.
When Berrios pitches in Camden Yards, we should expect him to do well.
At the very least, we should thus look to wager on the Baltimore team total “under” when Berrios pitches in this city. The trend justifies this wager.
Not All Trends Are Useful
We see that trends can be valuable. They have value when they connect to the bigger picture. However, not all trends do that. Not all trends help explain why a side is likelier to win in a given game or why an “over” or “under” is likely to hit in a specific game.
An example of a useless trend is the days of the week.
If Baltimore tends to win on Tuesday, that would be able to be expressed in terms of a trend. But such a trend doesn’t mean anything. This is because there’s no reason why any team should do well on one day or another. There’s no rational explanation for such a trend. It doesn’t help explain or predict player and team performances.
So, in order to make use of trends, you have to consider which ones are important. To do this, you have to remember to stay rational and logical. You have to remember to try to unlock the big picture.
Trends are a potential treasure, but you will succeed as a bettor when you remember to discriminate among trends and consider which ones are useful and valuable to coming up with the best-argued prediction for a given game.
