Baseball - Throw Away Baseballs Overall Record Folk

For all intents and purposes, a team's overall record in baseball is meaningless when you are looking to palce your bets. It is a defunct property of a team that has little or no bearing on betting the game. The oddsmakers need to know it to set an accurate line but you don't.

There are a lot of factors that go into determining a betting line. The fact that they have been considered already just means that we do not have to analyze them ourselves.

More important than a team's record is their recent record. How they have done in their last 10 games, last 5 games, last 20 games are all more important factors. If a team started off the season 17-4 and then went on to go 20-20, would you treat them like a 37-24 world series bound team or a mediocre 0.500 team?

People also tend to fall under the mentality that a team is "due". How many times have you told yourself to go for a good team that lost a couple of games in a row because they were due to win a game. The sportsbooks know the bettors mentality and will adjust the odds against your betting habits. So although the likelihood of your team losing did not increase, going against them became the profitable position.

A classic recent example was the Yankees getting swept by the Oakland Athletics. The Oakland Athletics were coming into these games in the middle of a six game winning streak but with a crappy record. The Yankees were in the middle of a mini losing streak but a great record. What won out?