MLB Daily

Webbie’s Odds this morning

My thoughts on today’s games.

If you wanted to MIL Burnes, that should have been played last night when the line was -150. Now that it has moved, the value has slipped away. We are still trying to get the best number we can and we are trying not to wager on the worst of the number. WSH Corbin seems to be popular today. It doesn’t bother me as a play as long as you keep it to a first 5 innings wager. The WSH bullpen is not very good at all and is a disadvantage against NYM. All the pitchers today are most likely to only go 4-6 innings, so bullpens will play a role. Don’t bet on the WSH bullpen! CLE Bieber is special. He is a Cy Young kind of pitcher and he has a good line against Greinke today. He has only thrown 30 pitches as a MAX in spring games so he will not make it too far today. An increase of 25 pitches doesn’t guarantee he will go 5 innings. You take an average of 15 pitches per inning to get a gauge of how many innings a pitcher may go. Here again, a first 5 seems a better play, but the numbers do not make it a smart wager. I do not mind Bieber bets, but it is too high a price (F5). I like the STL team’s total of over 4.5. I got it at -120. STL will face PIT Brubaker. Brubaker has a propensity to walk batters and allows hard contact. Guys getting on base, hard contact, is right up the STL offense alley. STL has had major success off Brubaker going 29 hits in 83 at-bats for a .337 avg with 6 HRs and a total of 14 extra-base hits. He faced STL 4 times last year going 0-4 with 21.2 innings allowing 26 hits and 16 runs! I like HOU Valdez +110 against LAA Ohtani. Yes, I like LAA this season. But I do like this spot here for HOU. They are a well rounded offense that can score multiple ways. Ohtani has NOT had much success against HOU in the past, plus he has only maxed out at 33 pitches in the spring. This will become a bullpen battle in which HOU has the edge. Lastly, I SD Darvish -136 against ARI. My number on this game is -181, so my numbers suggest a BIG value on the favorite. ARI Bumgarner is a balls-in-play pitcher so SD should have the ability to create more offense than does ARI against Darvish.

My 3 suggested wagers are STL TT O4.5 -120, HOU Vadez +110, SD Darvish -136

Have a great day!

I have been in these lanes for many years. My partner, Jeff Dawson @ECSportsInvest (Twitter), has also been with me. We have been saying this seems like forever. It wasn’t too long ago where betting was a conversation that was held in places where privacy was a concern. If I told anyone I was wagering on the games, it was like I was a criminal! We had to send money to overseas accounts via MoneyGram and use fake receiver names and cities just to fund accounts. Times have changed and more changes are coming rapidly. States are now legalizing sports betting and there are billions of dollars in this industry.

I am in these lanes to capitalize on this business and to share knowledge that helps it grow. The more informed bettors are, the more they play. The better the data, analysis, and content, then the more enjoyable the sports become. It goes hand in hand. We pull the drapes back allowing the mysteries of wagering to be disclosed. In many ways, there are no secrets just viewpoints and analysis. Looking at sports through this lens has been an eye-opening experience and one that breathes a new intensity to games that may never have been enjoyed before. When an executive at NBC declares there will be sports betting content will be synonymous with sports content, then we are going down the correct path.

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The purpose of Webbie’s Odds is to get a neutral, non-biased line that can be then compared to sportsbooks’ odds. The goal is to create value based on what a number should be based on “true” team value compared against a number that has expectations of the betting market involvement. Sportsbooks have risk they have to account for so their numbers are biased to protect against too high of a volume of risk on one side. Ultimately, there can be many various reasons odds get moved around such as money coming in on series prices, run lines, first five innings, and other reasons, but for our purposes, we’ll just use risk mitigation on the money line.

Webbie’s Odds are created using a base formula originally produced by Joe Peta, author of Trading Bases. If you have not ever read this book, I highly recommend it. Joe was a Wall Street trader who was injured in an accident. He was unable to continue his Wall Street job while rehabbing his injuries. He is a baseball fan. He applied Wall Street stock market formulas to MLB odds. He then used sabermetric data to ultimately create the most accurate line without bias available. Webbie’s Odds are these exact odds, with slight variances that I believe are significant to having the most accurate odds based on team and starting pitching strengths available. So, if we can agree on that, then we can dive into how to use Webbie’s Odds.

First, let’s look at 2022 Opening Day now that we have some odds from sportsbooks. I am using MGM’s line.

A couple of notes, BOS/NYY and SEA/MIN have been moved to Friday 04/08 as the weather conditions merited cancellations. You will the games listed by Away and Home teams then start times. I try to keep with the order of start times and then rotation numbers to make wagering simple. Next then is rotation numbers. Next is the away team listed pitcher, then the home team listed pitcher. Pretty standard to this point.

In the dark blue section, we see Webbie Line and Implied Probability. When I make the odds, the results are generated in a probability format. Ultimately, my odds tell me the probability one team will have to win this game. I then have to turn that into a money line. There are many calculators you can use for this but my program is written with the formulas so the transition to a money line is transparent. Let’s look at MIL @ CHI rotation #969 and #970.

Webbie’s Odds are listing MIL Burnes at -204 and MGM lists it at -160. The implied winning percentage for MIL is 67.07%. It means that MIL should win this game with Burnes on the mound against Hendricks 67.07% of the time. A simple way to gauge value is to subtract the higher odds line from the lower one to get the variance. In this case, MIL -204 less MIL -160 makes -44 variance. Determine which side is getting the benefit of the odds number. Here we see MIL should be -204 but we can bet them at -160 creating -44 points of value in the money line. MIL is the right side. For every 10 points of variance, 2.3% of the value is created. That calculation comes from knowing the implied percentage of -100 (50.00%) and -110 (52.38%). We take 4.4×2.3=10.1. It means that we are gaining 10.1% of value by wagering on MIL against the odds posted by MGM. Beautiful! We do this for every game and then make wagers accordingly. Now you can truly calculate EV+.

The above Webbie’s Odds shows the complete form. The royal blue section is Webbie’s Odds and the open line, AM line, and PM line moves. The navy blue section is the Totals section. Again, the same format where I have Webbie’s totals, the opening totals, then the AM number, and the PM number. I derive the totals from a concept of what it takes to score runs. On average, it takes 2.5 hits plus BBs to score one run in an MLB game. I have written a program that calculates predicted results based on many data points such as the past 30 days, pitcher versus an opponent, situational outcomes, pitcher versus the lineup, plus similar attributes for the bullpen.

I hope you like Webbie’s Odds. It did take much work to generate but I found them to be extremely valuable.

Let’s first just take a minute to celebrate that we are having an opening day! It was just a month ago we all were waiting on the reporters to give us an idea of how the CBA negotiations were going as they were clinging to a chain-linked fence watching the participants walk back and forth. I am so glad we are beyond all that! Yay for baseball.

This will not be a usual opening day. First off, the schedule was just moved to this date so this is a normal weekend of games for MLB as the schedule lays out. Yes, there were time changes made to the start of these games to account for a feel of opening day. However, this means several things. It means not all teams will open their seasons on the same day. This alone is not unusual as this was normal several years ago. Some of the teams are opening with a 4 game series and others with a 3 game series. Again, not the most unusual of circumstances. As we look at this with a focus on wagering, let’s look at what to expect on the field as that is where I think we will see a significant variance.

The shortened spring training has lessened the number of weeks for starting pitchers to build up their arms to be able to throw 8 or 9 innings. Haha. Like they do that anyway. We have pitchers starting on Thursday that have maxed out pitch counts in the spring with a range from a low of 30 to a high of 84. Ideally, an MLB pitcher will add 20-25 pitches each start. As they get to around 55, they usually will graduate those pitch counts by 15, not 20. The idea is to maintain and build strength in the arm, not to see how many pitches they can throw. It is done by building repetitions gradually thus less wear on the arm. This means we will have very few pitchers ready to go deep into the games, thus we will need more arms to fill those innings, so the bullpens will be highly used for the first two weeks or so. Keep this in mind when selecting your wagers! It would be a great idea to know what to expect from the starters in terms of usage. You can then formulate an opinion on whether a first 5 innings wager, full game wager, or pass is best. For example, I have an entire list of the pitchers and their max counts, with how many pitches they have thrown in the spring. I feel relatively comfortable that I can gauge how far each one could go in a game. This is an edge!

Another common issue will be that hitters are not ready either! A normal spring will have the batters take at least 50-55 at-bats with highs in the 70s. The 2022 spring saw the range be at 30-35 at-bats and the highs in the 40s! This means the batters will not yet have seen enough live pitching to have their timing sequenced properly. They need the next week and a half or so, then they will be caught up. This tells the astute gambler something as well. Pitching will be ahead of hitting for the first 7-10 days! As we keep compiling opinions on what the season on the field will look like, we can combine these thoughts to make great, smart investments.

I would like to think of these games as 2 in 1. Handicap the starting pitcher and then handicap the bullpen. Ideally, we should be doing this all season, but it will not be more crucial than at the start of this season. In a normal game in June, a pitcher goes at least 55-60 pitches to save on the bullpen usage no matter how he is doing unless injured. These are not that way, there will be “hard” pitch count limits and will not go beyond them but by a handful or so. It means we need to know who is available to pitch out of the bullpen. We MUST identify them and what quality they bring to the game. Every team is set up with their best guys for the 7th, 8th, and 9th innings. Bullpen guys are there to replace a tiring or ineffective starter but make no mistake, they are relief pitchers because the starting pitcher is better than they are. Ok, this means we will see many pitchers who will border on MLB quality. The batters will put the ball in play against these pitchers! Look for runs to come later in games than at the start of games.

Lastly, know the weather conditions. If you can get air density numbers, you have a big edge. At least know the wind speed, the wind direction, and the temperature. These will also have an effect on the games. See this article for more on weather effects: https://mlb-daily.com/2022/04/04/weather-affects-on-mlb-games/

We should realize MLB has segments of seasonality that have effects on game outcomes, and all MLB teams have spurts of success and failure over a 162-game season. These factors are areas we can exploit if we look a data properly.

A complete MLB season starts in late March or early April depending on the year. It is 162 games long completed in October making it 6 months long. During those 6 months, the weather changes can be dramatic. The start of a season will have many games where the temperatures are cold and later in the season, the temperatures will be hot. There is a noticeable difference between the games in cold weather and hot weather. It applies mainly to the runs scored. In general, run-scoring is less when it is cold and more when it is hot. This is valuable data as the total for games needs to be adjusted as the season progresses in the cold climate cities. Be careful blindly wagering on cold games. It has become more of a known factor, so sportsbooks have adjusted the totals. The following chart indicates temperatures and runs scored.

In general, run-scoring is less when it is cold and more when it is hot. This is valuable data as the total for games needs to be adjusted as the season progresses in the cold climate cities. Be careful blindly wagering on cold games. It has become more of a known factor, so sportsbooks have adjusted the totals. The following chart indicates temperatures and runs scored.

As you can see, in general when it is cold, there is much less scoring. I found it interesting though that the scoring average increased with temps under 40. There are some reasons this could be the case and the main one is the starting pitcher’s grip on the baseball. As their fingers are cold or numb, their command and control will be less. The only true batter performance increase is the walks whereas batting avg, slugging pct, and such all are less. Over the past 10 seasons, the OVER has gone 43-33-3 in games under 40 degrees weather. A sign that the books have adjusted. The vice versa is also true for the games in the heat. When the weather is 90-99, it is most optimal. These are scenarios to think about when wagering games from early April in Detroit or the middle of May in Texas!

Another factor of weather effects on MLB scoring is air density! A scientific fact is that a baseball will travel further in low-density air and less far in high-density air. Makes sense to me. We are going to be looking for something called the Neely Scale. It is an index of air density with a range of 40-70. The lower the number, the less dense the air is. A famous ballpark for low dense air is Coors Field in Colorado. It is at an elevation that creates this low density which allows the baseball to travel further. In recent seasons, humidors have been introduced. Gameday baseballs are stored in these humidors to offset the air density of certain ballparks. These humidors will change the composite makeup of the baseball which is reflected in the ‘bounciness” off the bat it will exhibit. The goal is to level-set all the ballparks to a standard as much as possible. However, the bottom line is that air density allows or restricts the distance a ball travels thus the denser the air, the less far it will travel, indicating fewer damaging hits and lower scoring games. Keep an eye on this one.

The long season will also allow every team to have spurts of success and failure. The best teams in the game will have days and weeks where they did not play their best. The worst teams will have their time where they are playing great too. We need to pay attention to the streaks teams are on. Due to the length of the season, MLB will have longer streaks both winning and losing ones. The best advice is to not predict when the streak will end but be riding the streak as long as possible. The better teams tend to have more winning streaks and the losing teams have more losing ones. A common streak is 3-5 games, but it is not rare to see them extend beyond.

Handicapping these games requires a set of data points unique to the sport. Anyone who delves into the numbers will tell you that a stat is only as good as the data and to have a good stat, you need an adequate supply of data. This is where a balance is required for MLB. Let’s say you are handicapping a game in the middle of July. Ask yourself this question. Should it matter to the outcome of this game what a player produced from April? The obvious answer is NO! If this is the case, then why are season-long stats used to handicap the game in July? They shouldn’t be! However, we still need enough data to get a reasonable suggestion of performance so we can predict how well the player or team will perform today. We need current performance indicators. I utilize these sets of numbers. A starting pitcher will make 32 starts if he doesn’t miss a turn in the rotation. I use his last 30 days as a fair representation of his current performance. He should make 5 or 6 starts and throw roughly 30 + innings. The bullpen pitchers are used more frequently so we need a shorter time frame for them. If 3 weeks ago they were lights out, does that mean today we can expect the same? NO. I utilize the last 14 days. I have found that if I use a shorter time frame, one bad outing can skew the results too badly to be relied on for accuracy. A reliever will normally make 6-8 appearances in those 14 days which is enough to give us an indication of what his current performance is. The batters are similar to the relievers, but they get hot and cold quicker. This means we need a shorter time frame to get the most accurate performance.  I use the last 7 days for hitters. I think you can see the overall idea here is to gauge current performance. We cannot do that by using season-long data. If we do this right, we can capture the spurts and react faster than the books giving us many edges and opportunities to capitalize.

I know that weather can and often does change especially the time frames when fronts make it into the area, but I am posting the weather forecast for the games as of today 04/04. We NEED to be alert as to what we see. I have written articles in the past on weather effects (see my next post for more on this) and if any of these early games have specific things associated with them. Weather effects are temperature, air density, wind, and precipitation. For that matter, this is a daily exercise we must peek at throughout the season however the early games have specific temperatures we are looking for.

I know most of you are expecting me to say that in games where the temperature is less than 40 degrees, we are looking to the Under. Hover, this is NOT the right stance to take. In fact, over the past 10 years, the OVER has gone 43-33-3 (.565) in such games! The main reason for this is not that there are so many more runs scored, but that the sportsbooks set a low total. We want the sweet spot of 50-59! There have been fewer runs scored in games at this temperature than in games below 40 degrees!

Ok, now the next weather issue is wind. The wind is more impactful than in any other condition on the scoring of games. We need to find conditions that are above 14mph! We don’t really care about anything less. There are sites that provide the direction of the wind as well (extremely important). We need to know if the ball will travel further because the wind is carrying it or if the ball will travel shorter because the wind is knocking it down. Maybe now you can see why we don’t really need to know about a 10mph wind because the ball will neither be carried nor knocked down. It should be obvious that if the wind is blowing out away from home plate, then it will travel further. If the wind is blowing in towards home plate, then it will travel less far. Knowing this will impact the ability of teams to hit “damaging” flyballs. If they can hit more or get some cheap ones, look at scoring to be high, if the wind is knocking them down, them look for scoring to lower.

Ok, now to the forecast!

First, note that the chance of precip showing at the highest of only 40% looks like we might be able to get the games played. Pay attention to the time starts though as forecasts are now time-based as you see shortly. Looks like we are going to be alright for these games. Now let’s look at temperature and wind conditions.

Notice here that the chance of precipitation increases as the day goes on. It starts at 40% and is at 55% by 4 PM so we might have a shortened game! This will impact scoring. Also, a major note is the wind. It is forecast to be blowing at 16-17mph in from right-center field. Lastly, the temperature is in that magic 50-59 degrees zone at 52-53 degrees. BOS/NYY are historically high-scoring games, this one might be a great spot to be on the UNDER.

Chicago Wrigley Field is famous for the wind and the wind will be a major factor on Opening Day. It is blowing out to right-center field at 18-19mph! Expect this to be the very last game total posted all season. Sportsbooks want the wind information before releasing a total and don’t be surprised to see these totals at or above 10 runs when the wind is blowing out. The temperatures will be low 45-47 degrees. The precipitation chance is only 15% so we should see a game here.

Based on my comments, I think you can piece together the outlook for these games from here so I will just post the forecast for the rest of them.

Some changes happened so another update was required. Trades impact these numbers as teams are raising and lowering their winning probability numbers for the season. For example, Manaea leaving OAK and going to SD increases SD and lowers OAK, which will make SD stronger and OAK weaker. Injuries will also impact the probabilities. NYM DeGrom missing at least a month will lower their expectations. We also had some changes in who would be the starting pitchers. If there is a blank space, there has yet to be a named official starter for the game.

In case you missed the live versions, here are the shows recorded!

Follow along today (04/03 Sunday) @ 4:30 pm Eastern Time!

Use these links to catch the show LIVE! We will be fielding questions so if you want to ask about the teams or players, fire away!

@Webbie20mlb on Twitter

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I set the odds about one week ago so now with one until opening day, I thought I should revisit the odds. A couple of things have changed. First, we have some definite starting pitchers now. The list of “named” opening day starters are EOVALDI, BURNES, DEGROM, RYAN, BIEBER, GREINKE, WAINWRIGHT, MAHLE, FRIED, VALDEZ, OHTANI, DARVISH for Thursday, April 7th. The confirmed “named” starters for Friday, April 8th are RODRIGUEZ, NOLA, MEANS, MCCLANAHAN, BUEHLER, WEBB, GRAY, BERRIOS, SANMARTIN, MORTON, ODORIZZI. The second is that my forecast of team wins has changed just a bit. With these two changes, we have new odds!

On Thursday, certainly, BOS/NYY is a popular game. NYY having Cole on the mound will make them a large favorite. NYM DeGrom is the only > -200 game and -227. MIL Burnes and SD Darvish will be very large away favorites. SEA RAY is now a small FAV over MIN with Ryam starting. MIN Joe Ryan is a rookie. He will be the first MIN rookie to start opening day since 1969. He was a 7th round draft pick of the TB Rays back in 2018 (overall pick 210). He made 5 starts late last season going 2-1 with a 4.05 ERA. 26.2 inn). He does NOT throw hard (91.3mph) but is graded with 3 plus pitches (FB, CB, and SL). He throws FB 66% of the time, SL 16.5%, CH 10%. In 3 of the 5 starts, he allowed 2 runs or less. He will get to face the reigning AL Cy Young winner Robbie Ray. KC is allowing Greinke to make a “ceremonial” opening day start. Greinke does not have the best stuff on this team but he is a veteran and log time Royal. I don’t like his matchup though with Bieber. ATL Fried gets the opening day nod for the World Champs. I like their chances vs the Reds. STL Wainwright will not be a favorite often when he matched up against the better pitchers in rotation spot #1, but against PIT, he should be just fine. The game of the day will be HOU/LAA. Framber Valdez gets the start. HOU manager Dusty Baker could not get Verlander on the right days to match up to starting on Thursday so it will be Valdez. I have this a pick’em. An interesting note is that Odorizzi gets the Friday start and he will match up with Syndergaard (not confirmed) which should make HOU the dog.

On Friday, we have 6 games > -200 favorites. We have an early look to see how DET matches up as they get the division-winning CHW in game #1. CHW will go with Lynn against newly acquired Eduardo Rodriguez for DET. TB beat the BAL 18 out of 19 games last season so they couldn’t ask for a better start as they get to play them at home in their opener. TOR opens as a HUGE fav over TEX. Berrios is -205! The game of this night should be MIA / SF. This matches MIA Sandy Alcantara and SF Logan Webb. Great pitching here with SF slight home favorites. LAA Syndergaard IS a favorite over HOU and Odorizzi. Not a big favorite but -110.

These will be very close to my final odds, however, there could be some changes being necessary. I will post one more time once all the pitchers are confirmed. FYI..I do this for every game every day! Let’s see if we can use my numbers to find value when the odds do come out at the sportsbooks.