Bad Teams Can Win You Money in Baseball Too

by Pralay (April 7, 2007)

Category: Baseball Betting Systems

The old handicapping addage is that any team has the propensity to make you money in gambling. Because if they did not then everybody would be millionaires betting against them. Therefore you all should stop worrying about betting only the good teams because there are bad teams worthy of betting. I mean, even the Kansas City Royals win games sometimes. The problem is that people are impatient people and they want to win now and bad teams win once in a blue moon it seems.

Kansas City Royals Betting Angle. The Royals started out the season 2-2. Both of their wins came at the start of the series. This is just a continuation of an angle that they were good last year. Last year the Royals were 23-28, +13 units in the first game of a series. Nope, I am not kidding you, these Royals could have won you some nice chunk of change in that situation.

Tampa Bay Devil Rays Betting Angle. The Devil Rays were a paltry 61-101 last season. They are consistently below 70 wins every year and have lost their backers 55 units over the past 6 seasons. Every season was unprofitable except one year where they were +1 units. But as a home dog in division rivalry games, these Devil Rays would have won you 23 units over the past 4 seasons.

Commonalities Across Betting Angles. Both the Royals angle and the Devil Rays angle have something in common. They both betting angles that we always try to promote. In the Royals situation, we also explain to focus on underdogs in the first game of a series. And the Devil Rays, we always try to promote betting on home underdogs. And as you can see, sometimes it does not matter how bad a team is. If they are in the proper situation, a bet should be placed.

Fade Bad Teams Early, Bet Them Late. Over the past 8 seasons, bad teams are -118 units in the first half of a season but are +71 units in the second half of the season. That is a difference of 189 units! It is no surprise to us that this is the case. This is true because the betting public starts betting frantically late in the season when baseball gets interesting. Right now, the only people gambling are the experienced handicappers and a few of you addicts. Yes, I called you an addict :-). So that keeps the moneyline odds pretty honest. But late in the season when everybody begins to bet, the odds get inflated for the good teams thus giving value to the bad teams. We know this for a fact because the win percentages in the first half of the season (42.5%) and the second half of the season (42.6%) are roughly identical... thus that difference of 189 units equates to the sportsbooks adjusting the odds 9.4 points against bad teams late in the season. WOW!

Throw in the Towel if the Opponent is Off a Shut Out Loss. This is one situation you don't want to bet on a bad team. The thing about bad teams is that any good team can beat the living #%&@ out of them if they had the motivation to do so. And when teams are coming off a shutout loss, they generally look to come back strong in their next game. And they will generally have no problems bouncing back against a bad team. Over the past 8 seasons, bad teams have gone [165-248, -56.24 units] which basically means that they are overvalued by about 14 points in these games.

Avoid if Opponent is Hitting Well. Bad teams in baseball have one major thing in common and that is that they have poor pitching. Pitching keeps you in ball games but it also keeps you out of them. And a bad team will generally have a tired bullpen and horrible 3rd, 4th, and 5th starters. So no matter what angle or system you find your team to be in, if their opponent is hitting well do not bet on the bad team.

First Game of a Series Revisited. We mentioned how the Royals fared better in the first game of a series but there are situations where all teams do better in the first game of a series. When our "bad" teams are coming into the series off of a win, they have a 7 point greater advantage than if they had a loss coming in. So we advise you to pay attention on those teams that have a bit of a momentum going in their favor.

This article has been written by the experts at Easy Baseball Betting and the statistical sources of this article comes from our Guide to Betting Baseball.