Baseball has been my favorite sport ever since I was a kid. Playing countless hours with friends, annoying my mom throwing a ball against our brick wall outside, and watching as many Cubs games as I could made up a good chunk of my youth. Many will cite the game being too boring and slow, but not me. It’s an athletic chess match like no other sport (especially in the National League), and there is so much more to the game than most realize.

This love of the game has grown even more the past couple years as I dove into developing baseball models and offering MLB betting picks. The baseball season can definitely be a grind, but it’s a lot easier to get through if you love the sport. Odds are, you’ve bet on football and/or basketball for years but possibly haven’t even touched baseball. Whether you bet on football and basketball for entertainment or with the intent to make money, betting baseball is a much better option. This may seem crazy, but read through this list of my top three reasons to bet baseball this summer.

1. Players and Bettors Interests Are Aligned

Football and basketball regularly make up about two-thirds of all bets placed in the United States. In these sports, most bets are made on the point spread. Conversely, baseball wagers are made on the money line. Instead of simply betting who will win the game, most bettors bet HOW MUCH a team will win (or lose) by in football and basketball. An example will best illustrate how this causes a misalignment of interests between the bettors and the teams they bet on:

The Patriots are 3.5 point favorites against the Broncos. The score is tied, and the Patriots have the ball at the 2-yard line with three seconds left. You bet on the Patriots to cover the 3.5-point spread (so they must win by four points or more). What do you think the Patriots are going to do? You are praying for the Patriots to score a touchdown to cover the spread, but any kid could probably tell you they will kick a field goal to win the game. See how crazy this is?

You were confident the Patriots would win the game, so much that you thought they would at least win by four points. Belichick calls for the field goal, they make the easy kick, and win the game by three points. Patriots win the game, but your bet loses. This sort of thing happens all the time in point spread sports – how many times has a meaningless shot in basketball blown a cover for you? I’m sure more than once. How about when a big college basketball favorite covers your bet all game, empties its bench for the final few minutes, and the cover is lost? The coach clearly didn’t have your interests in mind then.

As Joe Peta in Trading Bases puts it, “would you ever tie your financial interests to someone who didn’t share the same incentives that get you paid?” I sure hope not, but that’s exactly what can happen when betting on point spreads. This doesn’t exist in baseball, as bets are made on the money line. Instead of using a point spread to show the favorite and underdog (and how much they should win/lose by), the money line shows the probability of a team winning the game.

For example, the Cubs are a -114 favorite today for a money line bet. This implies they have a 53.3% chance to win the game according to the odds. My model projects they actually have a 57.3% chance to win, so I want to bet the Cubs money line at this price. No matter who I pick though, I know that either team will try to win the game. Players will try to score runs on offense, prevent runs on defense, and managers will use strategies to optimize the team’s chance of winning – thus enhancing the chances of my bet winning. This doesn’t happen when betting point spreads in football or basketball.

2. Smaller House Edge

For anyone that has been to a casino, you know that all games have what’s called a “house edge” built in to each game. Basically, it is the percentage of bets the house (i.e. casino) expects to keep over time. In roulette, the house edge is 5.26%. This is because you can bet on any number 1-36, but the wheel also has two zero spaces that everyone loses on. There is a 2/38 chance of this happening, or 5.26%, so over time the house expects to make 5.26% of all the money bet at the table.

What about the house edge in sports betting? It’s easy to figure out for point spread bets, as those are almost always listed at -110 odds (this simply means that you need to bet $110 for every $100 you hope to win). Going back to our Patriots/Broncos example, let’s assume a sportsbook took two point spread bets – one on the Patriots (-3.5) and one on the Broncos (+3.5) both at -110 odds.

The sportsbook received $220 total from both bettors. The Broncos covered, so they must pay $100 to the bettor that picked Denver in addition to their initial $110 bet. This leaves the sportsbook with a net gain of $10. 10 divided by 220 is .0455, so the house edge for point spreads at -110 odds is 4.55%.

On the contrary, the house edge for baseball is typically half that of point spread odds. Because baseball betting doesn’t have the same draw and popularity of football and basketball, sportsbooks cut their odds prices a long time ago to attract more action. Instead of the traditional -110 odds for even match-ups, -105 is now the norm for baseball. This drops the house edge from 4.55% to 2.44% using the same calculations as above. However, the price advantage doesn’t stop there.

As sportsbooks raise the money line price higher for favorites to -110, -120, -130, and so on, the price for the underdog moves as well, to +100, +110, +120, respectively. For each dollar bet, there is always a ten-cent difference between the amount required to win $1 with a bet on the favorite and the payout a $1 bet on the underdog will win. This difference, or spread, is where the term “dime line” comes from and is the number one reason why I concentrate on baseball.

With the same probability calculations we have been using, you can see as the price of the favorite rises, the house edge actually decreases! Let’s look at two examples from today’s games:

Tigers (-105) vs. Athletics (-105)

Implied Probability: Tigers 51.22% / Athletics 51.22%  House Edge: (51.22% +51.22%) -100% = 2.44%

Nationals (-167) vs. Phillies (+157)

Implied Probability: Nationals 62.55% / Phillies 38.91%  House Edge: (62.55% + 38.91%) -100% = 1.46%

Pretty amazing, right? While the house edge for football and basketball will hold at 4.55% no matter how big the point spread gets, baseball’s house edge shrinks with bigger favorites and underdogs. This is a huge advantage, which significantly lowers your break-even point (and thus increases your profit).

3. Sample Size and the Ability to Model

The last main advantage of betting baseball is the increased ability to model games. Out of all the major American sports, baseball is by far the leader in analytics, research, and advanced statistics. Now popularly known as sabermetrics, this phenomenon has allowed front offices and sports bettors alike to more accurately project a game’s outcome. A huge reason for this is because individual performance is much easier to isolate. In football and basketball, outcomes are highly dependent on many factors. In baseball, games are virtually many mini-games of pitcher versus batter (and more recently, defender versus batted ball). The evolution of advanced statistics continues to grow with sites like FanGraphs, Baseball Reference and Baseball Savant leading the way, making it even easier to project performance.

Because of this, it is much easier to predict the outcome of baseball games than any other sport. To compound this, the sample size of all this data is much larger, and thus more reliable. Consider the size of the regular seasons for the most popular sports betting leagues:

NFL: 16 games

NCAA Football: 12-14 games

NBA: 82 games

NCAA Basketball: 30-35 games

MLB: 162 games

What statistic do you think is more reliable – Tom Brady’s completion percentage in 16 games, or Kris Bryant’s batting average in 162 games? If you have taken any kind of statistics course, you know that larger sample sizes are much more predictive. With so many measurable skills and outcomes, with consistently improving analytics readily available to anyone, over a long 162 game season, it’s relatively easy to create a predictive model for baseball (relative to other sports).

Not only is it relatively easy, modeling baseball games can also be more profitable. Assuming you have created a model that gives you a positive expected value, the longer season is an incredible benefit. Compare this to (legally) owning a roulette table, which as we went over has a positive expected value of 5.26%. Would you rather own it for one hour, or ten hours? A lot of variance can happen in one hour, and you might not make a profit despite the 5.26% edge.

However, this variance should smooth out, or regress to the mean, over a longer period of time (such as ten hours). Compare this example to the difference between an NFL season and MLB season – 256 versus 2430 total games. Even if you built an NFL model with a positive expected value, there’s a decent chance you will lose money with such a small sample. By stretching this advantage over 2430 games, you are much more likely to make a profit.

Conclusion

If you got through all this, you should be able to see why baseball is by far the best sport to invest your money. With the players and managers having the same interests as you to win the game, the house edge being significantly smaller compared to other sports, and the ability to predict future outcomes, baseball can quite easily become your most profitable sport to bet.

We went over a lot, so if you have any questions about this feel free to email me or send me a message on Twitter. Need a sportsbook account to start betting baseball? Check out this article with a step-by-step guide on how to open a new account! Lastly, if you want to start making money on baseball today, then sign-up for an MLB picks package here! My model made subscribers over 40 units in April, so don’t miss out on immensely growing your bankroll any longer. Sign-up today!