MLB Betting: When Reputation Exceeds Merit
By Loot, Major League Handicapper, Lootmeister.com
When handicapping a baseball game, the identity of a few key players might tilt the odds or our choices one way or another. We look for big-name hitters and pitchers, figuring having them in our corner will help us. And it can. Where we run into problems in baseball wagering, though, is when we overrate a player's impact on a game when he is no longer the force that he used to be just a short time ago.
A top baseball player's career is long. Except for a select few, they don't always represent what they were at their best. A player's name-power can last years beyond when that guy stopped being a good player. Most players come to a point where their fame outweighs their actual effectiveness.
This is especially true with starting pitchers. A guy can get on a good run of success for a handful of years to the point where you just know it in your bones--he's a top pitcher. That's all you heard on the radio, TV, or internet over the course of years. It's now in your DNA. To undo that feeling, it takes a whole lot more than just a tough season or a bad injury. Often times, we fail to internalize a pitcher's demise until after he crashes out and burns. By then, it's too late. We put a bunch of losing bets on that guy that we'll never get back.
Some big-name pitchers will come through for you year after year. For every one of those guys is another 5 players who had a few good years, before coming down to Earth. While they're coming down to Earth, however, they are still getting credit for being great pitchers. They can be big favorites in games long after they lost their edge.
Stay alert of pitchers like this. A guy might win 17 games for a few years. In today's age, that means something to a lot of people. That guy could very well become overrated, as huge contracts are heaped on him. Then all of a sudden, he becomes a .500 pitcher and for years everyone is carrying on like he's still the man.
This is when you can find value on the other side. Look for these flashes-in-the-pan who are in the midst of a flameout. If they are still being valued on the basis of what happened in their prime, though you suspect their best games are behind them, there can be some nice value on the other side. Over time, this play could work out, being that you can be wrong more than you're right because the kind of pitchers we're talking about are favorites.
The same exists with non-pitchers. The shelf-life of a player's Q-rating is always longer than that player's actual prowess on the field. Don't get hypnotized by star-power in a lineup. You might take a team with all these big names on it, but look closely. Those names might ring, but we're looking to win games, not sell tickets to a fundraiser. It's all about what a guy is doing now--here and now. Not what he did in 2003.
That goes for teams too. When a team establishes a successful image, it sticks around even longer than the reps of top players. It takes a lot for a team to build a winning image. It takes more than a year or two of success. It's not uncommon to see that when a team reaches that point where the minds of bettors are conditioned to believe they are good--the tide is due to start shifting.
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The general betting public tends to bet on historically better teams at a higher rate. A lot of people are guided by the past. The Yankees can have 2 bad years and to a lot of people, the image of a good team will still exist in their minds. We shouldn't be concerned with that. On a given day, the worst team of the past decade might be the pick of the day. Any vague notions of how bad that team is shouldn't enter into it. After all, the worst teams are going to win 60 games. Go tell someone on the street who never heard of baseball that the worst team wins 60 games a year and watch their reaction.
In our heads, we know who the good and bad teams are and everything in between, but on a given day, our bets are liable to fall anywhere on that spectrum with equal regularity.
