MLB Baseball Betting for June 15, 2016
This is a strange time for sports bettors, particularly the professional bettors and ‘wise guys’ of the world. When I was living in Las Vegas, this time of year felt like the last days of junior high school. This has to do not only with the mentality of the average ersatz ‘sharp’ but with the summer vacation vibe that crops up after the end of hockey/basketball and lasts until just before the start of the football season.
Being a day in/day out professional sports bettor isn’t an easy gig. It’s a fun gig but it’s a lot of hard work. I’ve spent the past decade plus staring at spreadsheets and live odds feeds for 8 hours a day. This is what the guys that wave their arms around on infomercials screaming about ‘locks’ and ‘million star games of the year’ don’t tell you. For one thing, real ‘sharps’ don’t talk like that. And to no surprise to you I’m sure all of the ‘locks’ and ‘games of the year’ are nonsense. There are guys that make a ton of money betting sports. There’s also guys that make a ton of money selling sports picks. The Venn Diagram of the two barely touches in the middle.
It’s unfortunate, since the bottom feeders of the industry have damaged the public perception of legitimate experts. There are guys out there who are downright amazing. I’ve been doing this since before I could go into sportsbooks legally–30 years or so. I know ‘wise guys’ in Las Vegas that I’d go to dinner with and just sit there soaking up knowledge. I won’t name any names because I’m sure I’d forget someone and I don’t want to implicate anyone as a ‘bottom feeder’ by omitting them. Some you’ve likely heard of, some I know you haven’t. But there *are* some very intelligent people out there willing to share their knowledge. Hopefully, you’ll come to consider me one of that group.
Anyway, back to the ‘summer vacation’ for Las Vegas sports bettors. I’ve never really understood why more people don’t bet on baseball. The original point I was trying to make was that I get that some people need to ‘get away’ and take time off. If you’re in the business of selling your information to other people, leaving town when there’s only one major sport going on–and particularly since baseball has the lowest handle of all four major North American team sports–makes sense. Even for those ‘wise guys’ who aren’t in the ‘sports advisory business’ I can understand the benefits of getting out of Las Vegas and getting a ‘clear head’. If you’ve been to Las Vegas, you know it’s unlike any other place in the world. Now imagine living there immersed in the three ring circus 24/7. I won’t lie–it’s a lot of fun. But sometimes it’s necessary to get away to recalibrate your perspective. I never took the Summer off because I enjoyed betting baseball too much but I’d often sneak away for a few days, usually to Utah (Southern Utah in particular) or Northern Arizona.
So that’s where we are now–in sports betting’s ‘summer vacation’. If you’re sticking around we’ll try to hook you up with some baseball winners (and soon we’ll start covering the Canadian Football League which is a specialty of mine). I’ll try to teach you some handicapping theory in the process. In fact, we’ve got a ton of handicapping theory articles coming online in the future. We’ll sometimes use the daily posts to tie theory to practice. So bookmark this site and check out the betting guides if you’re new to ‘the game’. There’s a ton of sites that have boilerplate content and could care less about the quality of their information. I wrote most of the betting guides myself and take great pride in sharing my knowledge and experience with newcomers:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL FOR JUNE 15, 2016:
PITTSBURGH PIRATES AT NEW YORK METS:
You’ll frequently hear me say that ‘baseball is a process’. What this means is that with so many games it’s impossible for a team to be unduly focused on an individual contest. In football, you’ll frequently hear that Team A has ‘circled’ a revenge matchup against Team B because they lost to them in the playoffs last year or whatever. That’s impossible in baseball. Baseball is in my view a great metaphor for sports betting and handicapping. In both disciplines if you do the right things, work hard and get a few breaks you’ll win games. If you don’t, you’ll lose them. But you can’t get too high after you win and too low after you lose because you’ve got to get up and do it again the following morning.
The Atlanta Braves, for example, used to win more games than they would lose every year because they excelled at the ‘process’ at every level and in every facet of the organization. At some point, however, the process got short circuited in Atlanta and the result is the dumpster fire you have this season. It’s essential to keep the process in mind when you’re handicapping baseball. Many of the concepts that apply in other sports–‘letdown spots’, ‘lookahead spots’, ‘revenge spots’, etc. simply don’t work in baseball.
That’s a salient point in this game since the ‘past performance data’ shows that Pittsburgh has dominated head to head play with the Mets. Over the last three seasons they’re 13-4 +9.2 units including 5-2 +3.6 units on the Mets’ home field. They won last night’s opening game of the series and took 2 of 3 from the Mets at home earlier this season. In some cases one team dominating a head to head matchup is significant. In this case, I don’t think it is particularly. Heading into this game the Pirates are 3-1 against the Mets this season. That means that the bulk of that impressive head to head record–10 wins and 3 losses to be specific–came during the last two years. The 2015 Pirates finished 34 games over .500 and the 2014 team was also well above the ‘Mendoza Line’.
Pittsburgh is currently two games over .500 and are 4-9 in the month of June. New York’s numbers against left handed pitching aren’t great but we’re not talking Sandy Koufax on the mound opposing them. Jeff Locke has an ERA of 6.52 on the road (5.37 overall) and the Pirates have lost 5 of his 7 away starts. Noah Syndergaard has pitched very well–he’s got a 2.02 ERA overall with the Mets winning 8 of his 12 assignments. They’ve split his six starts at home but it hasn’t been his fault–at CitiField he’s got a 2.02 ERA and a 0.981 WHIP.
One thing you’ll discover if you bet on baseball long enough is that the starting pitching matchup is on balance over emphasized in the betting odds for a specific game. Except when it isn’t–that’s where you find value and in today’s pitching matchup the Mets/Syndergaard have a huge qualitative advantage over the Pirates/Locke. This price is a steal when you consider that Syndergard’s ERA at home is a whopping 4.5 runs better than Locke’s road ERA.
BET NEW YORK METS -160 OVER PITTSBURGH PIRATES