It's Opening Day in Major League Baseball and I've got many betting picks for you in
this video. But most importantly, I'll show you HOW the baseball betting tips are going
to be made. I'm Professor MJ and I teach statistics to university students in Canada. Let's crush
the sportsbooks together, shall we?
This is a super important video and I'll refer to it throughout the season when people ask
me how the baseball picks are made. What you need to understand is the MLB betting tips
will come from two different sources: 1) winning betting systems; 2) a very realistic simulation
program.
First, let me talk about the betting systems. I've got a playlist of about 10 videos unveiling
all details about many of those baseball betting strategies. They were developed after analyzing
data on 7 full MLB seasons.
To make things clear in your mind, let me give you a specific example. My best betting
system in baseball is called "The Hot Bats". It has two different sets of criteria for
betting, but let me present one of them to you. Suppose a team has won its past two games
by scoring at least 6 runs in each of those victories. If they are at home today, you
must bet AGAINST them. Over a 7-year period, this strategy led to a 47.57-unit profit via
1140 bets. That's pretty impressive, right?
There are many more winning betting systems that I came up with. I stronlgy invite you
to watch my baseball betting systems' playlist. It's a goldmine of information.
Now, the second source of MLB picks will be my realistic simulation program. This time,
if you want all details about how it works, I published a scientific article that was
reviewed by other statisticians that reveals all the secrets. It's called "Various applications
to a more realistic baseball simulator". You can look it up, if you want.
Let me give you a quick overview of how it works, without going into the fine details.
Basically, I wrote a super long program with the statistical software called R that simulates
baseball game. More specifically, it simulates each at-bat. There are 9 possible outcomes
to an at-bat in my simulator: a single, a double, a triple, a home run, a base on balls,
a hit by pitch, a strikeout, a ground out and a fly out.
What the program does is pick one of those 9 at-bat outcomes according to a set of 9
probabilities. How did these probabilities got fixed? This is where it gets tricky and
where you might want to look at the paper I wrote, but we are accounting for the batter's
statistics, and obviously also the pitcher's statistics. So, for example, if we have a
great batter facing a weak pitcher, then the probabilities of a single, double, triple,
home run, walk and hit by pitch are higher than usual.
Let me give you a quick glimpse of the program. Right here at the top I need to specify who
are the road and home teams. Each team has a number ID. In this case, 8 means the Cleveland
Indians and 10 means the Detroit Tigers.
Then, the variable N specifies the number of games I want to simulate. The larger, the
better for accuracy purposes, but the longer it takes to run the program. I have found
that 100,000 games is a good compromise.
The next few rows allow me to simulate games that have already started. By doing so, I'll
be able to bet in-play. For example, what inning are we at? Is it the top or the bottom
of that inning? How many outs were there? Is there a runner on 1st, 2nd and 3rd base?
What was the score when we start each simulated game? Finally, who was the next batter for
the road and home teams? Now, when I analyze pregame bets, I'm going to leave these variables
as they appear on your screen right now.
In the next section, I need to input the starting lineups, where each player has a number ID.
This is actually Cleveland's starting lineup for today, April 1st, 2021. The first batter,
ID number 16, is Jordan Luplow. The second batter is Cesar Hernandez. And so on. So you've
got the 9 batters, and then I also tell the program who is the starting pitcher. Same
for the home team, in this case the Detroit Tigers.
Then, the program will read a couple of files that contain all players' statistics and projections
for 2021. That will be key when it comes to simulating the outcome of each at-bat.
The program goes on and on and on with a lot of instructions on how to simulate games.
One more thing I'd like to mention to you: it even has very accurate rules for runner
advancement. For example, if there's a runner on 1st base and the batter hits a double:
where do runners end up? I used a HUGE dataset in order to come up with accurate probabilities.
Let's look at the example I just told you about. As you can see, if a guy hits a double
with a runner on 1st base, there is a 70.5% chance that the runners end up on 3rd and
2nd base. There is also a 25% chance that the runner scores, while the batter gets to
second base. There's also a 2.3% chance that the runner scores, and the batter goes to
3rd base, as they are trying to get the runner out at home plate.
Those were the numbers when there's no out. As you can see, they differ quite a bit when
there's 1 or 2 outs. When you think about it, it's not that surprising. The runner on
1st base will try to score more often when there are 2 outs, so that's why he scores
more often, but is also retired at the plate more often in these circumstances.
When the 100,000 simulated games are done, here is the output I get. On many betting
markets, the program converts the probabilities into fair odds. So basically, the numbers
shown tell you the minimum acceptable odds for A LOT of betting options.
The first one is the money line. As you can see, based on my simulator, the fair line
on Cleveland is -157 versus +157 on Detroit. In other words, if you get odds on the Indians
that are better than -157, you should bet them. In practice, I'm going to bet only if
there is a significant different between the fair line and the actual line. In this case,
if the line on the Indians was -155 I wouldn't bet it because even though it is better than
-157, it's too close to be worth it.
On the other side, if you get odds on the Tigers that are better than +157, you should
bet them. Early this morning I saw +170 on Detroit, so I did place a bet.
As of now, my program also takes a look at the run line and the total number of runs
scored in the game. It also investigates many things about the first 5 innings: the money
line, the run line and the total.
Then, we have a bunch of player proposition bets. First, we look at all 9 players from
the road team; will they get at least one hit or not? That's the same as betting over
or under 0.5 total bases, by the way. Same for the home team's 9 players. And then we
look at total bases, singles, doubles and home runs.
Then, will a run be scored in the 1st inning? Also, for innings number 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5,
will there be 0, 1 or 2+ runs scored?
Which team will have the highest scoring quarter? The road team, the home team or will it be
a tie? We also research the total number of hits in the game, and whether the final score
will be odd or even.
As the season goes on, I will add many more betting markets to my program. I'm really
excited to see how we're going to do.
In case you watch this video in time, here are the top 4 bets for the Indians versus
Tigers game on April 1st, 2021. First, I'm taking the Tigers with the run line of +1.5
at +102 odds with Pinnacle. Remember that the fair line was -115, according to my simulator.
My 2nd pick goes to under 4 runs in the first 5 innings at -115 odds with bwin, while the
fair line was -142. Therefore, we have an expected return on investment of 11.2% on
that bet.
Pick #3 is Jordan Luplow over 0.5 total bases, which is the same as betting at least one
hit, at -134 odds with Betway. The fair line is -179, so the ROI here turns out to be 10.4%.
Finally, the fourth pick is Eddie Rosario over 1.5 total bases at +150 odds with Bet365.
In this case, the fair line was +123 so we have a ROI of 12.1%.
I hope this all makes sense to you and that you will be part of this baseball betting
journey with me! I'll have PLENTY of baseball bets for you, so subscribe to this YouTube
channel and turn the notifications "on" so that you get an alert as soon as I release
new content. This is Professor MJ, I'll see you soon!