MLB Betting: Parallels Between Baseball Bettors and Players
By Loot, MLB Betting, Lootmeister.com
When watching Major League Baseball, we should be doing more than just seeing how our bets fare. We should take lessons from the very athletes we wager upon. MLB players are at the top of their profession. In order for us to succeed in MLB betting, we need to be the same thing. It's flabbergasting to realize there might be more guys who are actually playing in the big leagues than there are betting men who have been able to turn a profit in MLB betting year after year. Even if that isn't totally accurate, it's safe to say there aren't many who can do this.
Baseball players do a lot on the field of play that we should emulate. A good team has a long-term vision. Nothing unpleasant that happens in the short-term shakes their vision of the longterm goals of the team. When we bet, we are merely hoping that by the end of the season, we won some money. And what a long season it is. Months and months, spring training, a 162-game season, and then the postseason. We're trying to be there for the whole stretch. That means never getting too hung-up on anything bad in the short-term. Like a good team that understands that even a successful season has its share of peaks and valleys, we need to never get too excited about winning or too down about losing.
We've all seen these guys in the sportsbook before. They boil over when games don't go their way. Even players and managers can get irritated. That's natural. At the same time, they can usually take it stride. They know that getting overly-irritated about losing 1 out of 162 games is only going to affect future performances. A batter will start trying to do too much. A pitcher will rear back even harder. Usually, that just makes the problem worse.
The best teams and players in this business are the ones that never get too down. They lose it every once in a while. That's OK. But for the great majority of the time, they are able to chalk it up as part of doing business. We're talking about a sport where a good team can lose 60-70 times a season. It's a sport where the best hitters make outs several hundred times a year. That means those who wager on the results of this game are going to have to share in some of that failure. A part of betting on this game is that a lot of times, we'll be betting on teams and players that have off-nights. We know that going in, though, don't we? So not being able to accept defeat is really akin to going to the beach and complaining about the sand.
There are some forms of betting where we expect to win most, if not almost all of our bets. If you're taking a nationally-ranked college football team on the money line or a top boxer or MMA fighter, you're expecting to win. But those things don't lose 60 times a year. A boxer can go 15 years without losing. A really good football team might lose once every year or two. Conversely, a baseball team that gets through a week without losing is perceived as playing really well.
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So now that we know the nature of the beast, we can begin to calibrate our expectations and make-up to better cope with the ups and downs of baseball betting. We can't dwell on any one thing for too long. Baseball betting forces us to have a short memory. Just like the good veteran pitcher who can give up a towering home run and get his nose right back on the grindstone. Just like the hitter who looks foolish on a strikeout can come right back and be at his best. The best players are able to quickly eliminate the stink on their shoes when they step in doo-doo. A lot of bettors, however, will have that smell wafting for days.
When we see players losing their cool or managers flipping out on umpires, it might make us think they're all ranting maniacs. But there's a reason those things make the news and it's because it's actually unusual. For the most part, the bulk of those in MLB do a lot of things we should be doing as bettors. If we can do some of those things the pros do, it can only help bolster our bottom line.