How playoff baseball differs from regular season MLB betting

How playoff baseball differs from regular season MLB betting

By Gary Wise Oct 3, 2013

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While the general make-up of the game is the same, Major league Baseball’s playoffs are a different animal from its regular season. The Wild Card games have been played and the remaining combatants determined, so now is the time for baseball bettors to make an adjustment to a new format; the playoff series.

A different approach to roster management

Baseball’s regular season sees every-day play for six months and the best teams winning just 60% of their games. Given these realities, managers and players must work with an eye on maintenance. We see this influence in players being given days off, superior relief pitchers used sparingly, fielders choosing conservative approaches on difficult plays…all in the name of preservation.

With the importance of winning individual games magnified due to both gravity and sample size in the playoffs, managers are far more likely to kick conservative choices and player egos to the curb. Where a slumping hitter might be given a chance at redemption in the regular season, such liberties will not be taken in the playoffs (The Atlanta Braves, for example, didn’t include their highest-paid player -the slumping Dan Uggla-on their Divisional Series roster).

Similarly, a manager will use his entire roster far more often, looking for adjustments that improve a particular situation by a few percentage points. The time for fussing is over.

Who does this favour?

Teams with depth like the Oakland A’s and Boston Red Sox are more likely to have the right pieces to plug into appropriate situations that come out through the course of a longer series.

Teams who are healthy at the right time. With Sunday’s news that star center-fielder Matt Kemp would miss the playoffs, the Los Angeles Dodgers don’t look quite as appealing as they might have prior.

The better-rested teams should have an advantage. While the Pirates and Rays were playing wildcard games, the other teams were resting. Be careful though; there are myriad examples of teams getting hot at the right time and riding their momentum through to the World Series.

Regular season record

The importance of momentum and health is greatly reflected in the way teams with the better record have fared in recent playoff series. In the last 10 World Series, teams with the better record have gone 5-5, while going 4-5-1 in the American League Championship Series and 4-5-1 in the National League Championship Series (draws represent both teams having the same regular season record).

Why haven’t the better teams been more successful? The answer lies largely in this quote from Leonard Mlodinow’s The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives:

…if one team is good enough to warrant beating another in 55% of its games, the weaker team will nevertheless win a 7-game series about 4 times out of 10.  And if the superior team could beat its opponent, on average, 2 out of 3 times they meet, the inferior team will still win a 7-game series about once every 5 match-ups.  There is really no way for a sports league to change this.  In the lopsided 2/3-probability case, for example, you’d have to play a series consisting of at minimum the best of 23 games to determine the winner with what is called statistical significance, meaning the weaker team would be crowned champion 5 percent or less of the time.  And in the case of one team’s having only a 55-45 edge, the shortest significant “world series” would be the best of 269 games, a tedious endeavor indeed! So sports playoff series can be fun and exciting, but being crowned “world champion” is not a reliable indication that a team is actually the best one.

In other words, be careful not to put too much value in a superior overall regular season record -The hot hand in recent weeks may be a better bet. Tampa and St. Louis go into the playoffs in the best form.

The longer road

The Pirates and Rays have done well to survive this long, but history shows us the stats are against them. In the divisional era, 10 teams have survived a one-game tiebreaker (Wild Card or otherwise) before moving into series play. Of those, only the first (the 1978 New York Yankees) went on to win the World Series, and that was before divisional play began.

The 2007 Colorado Rockies were the only team to make it to the World Series since, and they were beat 4-0. Ultimately, the rigors of constant travel and play are likely to eventually catch up with a team facing fresher opponents.

Keep that in mind when planning a bet on the inform Tampa Bay Rays. They ended the season with a win in Toronto on Monday, flew to Arlington, Texas (2090 km) to win the tiebreaker on Tuesday, then flew to Cleveland (1676 km) to win the Wild Card on Wednesday before boarding yet another plane to Boston (1030 km), where they’ll play on Friday at 3 PM ET. They’re in the zone, but are they about fall off a cliff?

Home Field Advantage

The home team held a 1308-1122 advantage in MLB games during the 2013 season, meaning they had a 53.8 % chance of winning. Division winners were 313-173, (a 64.4% win rate), compared with a 257-229 record on the road (52.8%) showing why having an extra game at home in best-of-five or best-of-seven playoff series can be crucial.

Of course, knowing which teams have a more pronounced home advantage could also be key to your single-game betting. Here’s a look at home and away records for each playoff team:

Home & Away records for each playoff team

Team

Composite

Home

Away

AL East Champion 1: Boston Red Sox

97-60

52-28

44-37

AL Central Champion: Detroit Tigers

93-69

51-30

42-39

AL West Champion: Oakland A’s

96-66

52-29

44-37

AL Wildcard: Tampa Rays

91-71

51-30

40-41

NL East Champion 1: Atlanta Braves

96-66

56-25

40-41

NL Central Champion: St. Louis Cardinals

97-65

54-27

43-38

NL West Champion: Los Angeles Dodgers

92-70

47-34

45-36

NL Wildcard: Pittsburgh Pirates

94-68

50-31

44-37

It’s a lot to factor, but that’s what makes baseball betting so interesting. You’re working with more information than any other game offers you; it’s up to you to figure out how to use it.

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