Baseball Betting

The Revenge Factor in Baseball

February 17, 2007

We make a lot of fuss about how you should bet on teams that are on a roll. Specificallly late in a series, the team that has dominated the early games will generally come through with wins at the end. This is the reason there are so many sweeps in baseball.

In basketball and football, we always look to make bets on teams that are avenging losses. By betting on teams with revenge, you are usually betting on bad teams making winning in those sports easy is the fact that all you need is to beat the spread. But in baseball, teams must win for you to cash money and betting on bad teams to win a game is not sound strategy.

But here's an interesting catch we found. You want to bet on any team that is a heavy favorite in a game they have 5+ in-season game revenge. This is because those teams have gone [48-25 , +19 units] over the past 3 seasons. Capitalizing on motivated favorites is the key to this angle.

Over the course of history, this system does not work so well for American League teams. This is because American League has a bigger disparity between a good team and a bad team thanks to the designated hitter and the likes of the Yankees and Red Sox. In the National League, where teams play small ball to win games, the more motivated team playing with revenge will be the team that cashes in.

In conclusion, focus on National League favorites with revenge. Specifically those that have good small ball fundamentals and a strong bullpen because they will win the games they need to.