Baseball Betting Explained

Dating back hundreds of years, ‘America’s national pastime’ is not only a sporting phenonemon in the USA, but across the world. As you would expect with such a popular sport, it also offers a huge amount of betting opportunities on every game that is played, from New York to Tokyo, and plenty of countries in-between!

What Makes a Good Baseball Sportsbook

With baseball being such a popular sports for bettors, all the top sportsbook offer a range of markets on every major game that is played, whether that be MLB, or elsewhere in the world.

When choosing a sportsbook, we recommend choosing those who offer the most markets and the best odds, as well as a healthy dose of exciting promotions.

Baseball Odds

The odds will tell you how likely an outcome is in a baseball game - the larger the odds, the less likely it is to happen. If you place a $1 bet at 10/1 and it wins, you will return $10 profit, as well as your original $1 bet.

States Where Baseball Betting is Legal

Online sports betting is now legal in 25 US states, with new states legalizing it all the time. Kentucky, Vermont and North Carolina are expected to be the next states to legalize it before the end of the year.

MLB Betting

The elite baseball league is Major League Baseball, which is made up of 30 teams based in the United States and Canada. These teams are split into the National League and the American League, with each featuring three separate five-team divisions: East, Central and West. The winner of each division will qualify for the playoffs. With each team playing a minimum of 162 games in a season, there are plenty of betting opportunities on offer!

Baseball Betting

As such a popular betting sport, there are dozens of betting markets available on every baseball game that is played. Let’s take a closer look at some of the most common baseball betting markets.

Run Line Betting

This is essentially a handicap bet, which is very similar to spread betting in American football. With this type of bet, you are betting on how much a team will either win or lose by in a chosen game. For example, if you backed the New York Yankees @ -1.5 and they win by two runs, you will win your bet.

Game Total Betting

You will also have the option to bet on the total number of runs that will be scored in a baseball game. Each team bats for nine innings, with a run being scored every time a player makes it all around the bases - which means these total scores can run up very high indeed.

Player Betting

With baseball being such a statistics-based sport, it is very common for fans to bet on specific players and how they will perform, either over the course of a season or in a single game.

Betting on the World Series

A regular MLB season consists of more than 2,000 games, with all of them leading up to a final match-up: The World Series. This best-of-seven series is played between the winners of the American League and the National League, and is watched by millions of fans across the world.

With so many eyeballs on this series of games, it should come as little surprise that hundreds of betting markets are available on it. This includes all of the classic statistics-based bets you would expect, as well as a wide selection of novelty bets that should attract the attention of more inexperienced bettors.

Baseball Betting Tips

Anyone who has read Michael Lewis’ excellent book, ‘Moneyball’, or indeed watched the equally impressive Brad Pitt-led film, will know that baseball is a sport that is all about the numbers. This means that when it comes to betting on this iconic sport, your focus should start, and probably end, right there!

Let’s take a closer look at some of the important baseball statistics you should consider before playing a bet:

• Head-to-head match-ups - with teams playing each other so regularly, it is very important to consider how they have performed when facing off
• Pitcher’s ERA (Earned Run Average) - this score outlines the average amount of runs a pitcher will concede per nine innings. Anything below 3.00 is considered very good.
• Batter’s BA (Batting Average) - this score is defined by the number of hits a batter makes against the number of hits they have had. Anything around 0.300 is considered excellent.
• Batter’s RBI (Run Batted In) - this statistic credits a batter for making a play that allows their team to score a run. Over the course of a season, a score of 100 is considered very good.