MLB Betting: Having What it Takes to Thrive In a Long Season
By Loot, MLB Handicapper, Lootmeister.com
Before betting on baseball, we should make sure we have certain things in place. We have to steel ourselves for the long season before it even begins and prepare ourselves for the problems we will face. And we will face them. No one is immune. Not even the best players get through the entire year without facing adversity. We should expect the same. Being equipped to handle it is the key.
The season is a test of endurance. More than any other sport on the planet--it is a grueling campaign. You have spring training, where you can bet on games. Then comes the 162 game season. Look at the faces of people who don’t know sports when someone tells them there are 162 games in a baseball season. Their jaws drop. Then you have the postseason. It is truly a test of one’s stamina.
That applies to bettors as well. Players might laugh at that notion and we’re not going to get much sympathy from most people. That doesn’t mean the mental toll that is extolled on us isn’t real. The season can be long just for the casual fan who is just passively watching games. Even that guy will feel fatigue. So when we’re pouring over results daily, handicapping games, and formulating wagers--it will test our mental stamina.
Unlike players who are depended on by their teams, we don’t really have to show up if we don’t want. No one is saying we have to bet. Sure, we like to stay on top of things. We don’t want to miss out on a great bet or series of wagers because we’re on the sidelines, but we can’t allow fatigue to overcome us.
Contributing to the fatigue is the fact that baseball can’t be handicapped like other sports. The pitcher changes daily and he’s responsible for half of the action. It would be like if a football team had different players on one side of the ball every game. It would mean that every time that team plays, you have to do a completely new re-assessment. Sure, it comes rolling back around 5 games, but that’s still a lot more work.
Flexibility is therefore key. We can’t operate day-to-day with a locked-in perception of a team. It would be a like a football team that rotates 5 different quarterbacks. You wouldn’t just go week-to-week with the same view of that team. Baseball handicapping requires more from a handicapper from this perspective. And in a 162-game season, it can be a lot to ask.
Selectivity is key in the morass of Major League Baseball wagering. We need to be able to quickly determine where the edges are and when there is no advantage for us. What other sports have 15 games daily? Even NFL handicappers can have trouble giving every game its necessary attention. MLB handicappers have a lot more stuff to sift through. It’s just a lot harder to find the best moves when the choices are infinitely vaster.
Another part of the equation is our ability to become cavalier in the face of defeat. With a baseball season that lasts forever, 162 games a year, and hundreds of wagers being made--we need to have the skill of absorbing disappointment. We can be guided by our results to an extent, as we make adjustments in an effort to improve our bottom line. Where we can run into trouble is when we get rattled by losing, rather than using it to educate ourselves.
We need to scrutinize ourselves more in MLB wagering than most other sports. A poor wagering strategy or using a faulty outlook can carry over into an entire season. With the amount of games and the length of a season, being in bad form can result in a lot of damage. In other sports where the action is less frenetic, you have time for reflection. Baseball is a whirlwind of action that lasts for months. It’s easy for us to get lost in ourselves and not engage in enough self-examination.
We need to make adjustments. we should be constantly tinkering with our handicapping process--putting more credence in some things, while placing less importance on others. The problem is that we can get so busy with the work needed to follow this sport from a wagering perspective that we can forget to handicap ourselves.
