Happy #FastBreakFriday!
We had another profitable night yesterday for my MLB picks to get us back on a winning streak. As I mentioned on Twitter, I made some adjustments to my MLB betting model that I'm very excited about and they are already paying off. I think it will definitely break us out of this funk and back to our season high of 45 units very soon.
This week’s newsletter became too long for an email as I was writing it last night, so I turned it into a blog post instead. Hope this makes up for last week!
Blog Update
I have a new article up today covering the most important thing you need to know as a sports bettor - Bankroll Management. It is easily the number one topic you need to understand in order to be successful (and not be a degenerate). The article includes the best piece of advice I can give you, so check it out here!
MLB Analysis
Having created a predictive model to use for sports betting, I'm obviously very data driven in everything I do. Some sports bettors rely on situational handicapping (such as Tuesday's bonus pick on the Rockies), but as I covered in my last article, baseball is the easiest sport to model thanks to its large sample size.
Because of this large sample size of 162 games, we can reasonably expect any early season variance to regress back to the mean over time. With that, there are two stats I want to cover that should give us some angles to profit from in the near future.
BABIP with Runners in Scoring Position
The first stat is BABIP - which is Batting Average on Balls in Play. For a sabermetrics rookie, BABIP measures how often a ball in play goes for a hit. The league average is typically around .300 (30%). However, a handful of teams have been "unlucky" in this regard with runners in scoring position (RISP). To prove its significance, look at the Cardinals – a week ago they were near the bottom of the league with a .245 BABIP with runners in scoring position. They’ve now won six straight, largely due their improved hitting with men on base and raising their BABIP to .279. This stretch included 14 hits in 40 at-bats with RISP during their series against the Marlins, which comes out to a .350 batting average.
Here are the current bottom five teams along with their record:
| Team | BABIP | Record |
|---|---|---|
| Cubs | .244 | 17-17 |
| Royals | .244 | 13-21 |
| Indians | .242 | 18-15 |
| Blue Jays | .240 | 13-21 |
| Padres | .234 | 13-22 |
The most glaring teams from this list are of course last year’s World Series finalists – the Cubs and Indians. This should terrify the rest of the league, as both teams obviously have amazing offenses and won’t be at the bottom of this list much longer. The Indians are still in first place despite not having much luck with runners on base (they do play in the worst division), and the Cubs are just 2.5 games behind the Cardinals. The Cubs are struggling though with a poor start for their rotation, so we may actually find some value on them moving forward once their offense starts clicking on a regular basis.
The Royals and Padres are going to be terrible all season, so expect them to remain near the bottom. The Blue Jays, however, are an interesting team to look at. They had high expectations for the season and I projected them to go over their preseason win total of 85.5, but they are currently last in the AL East at 13-21. They started the season 3-12, so they’re slowly climbing back into the race and starting to score some runs. Staying healthy is looking like a challenge, but if their starters can stay on the field this could be another team with good value moving forward.
Bullpen Left on Base Rate
The second stat I wanted to quickly cover was team bullpen Left On-Base Rate (LOB%). As any baseball fan can tell you, bullpens have been quite terrible overall this season. We have seen plenty of leads blown late in games, many of those leads being for teams we had bet on. Nothing is more frustrating in baseball than picking the right team and backing the right starting pitcher, only to see a reliver ruin it. Basically, this has been happening a lot more than usual.
This is very strange because bullpens have become a huge focus for teams the past few years ever since the Royals reinvented the way relivers are utilized during their World Series runs. With all this attention and research on bullpens, then why are they so shitty this year? One word – variance, and bullpen LOB% can help show it.
Over the past three seasons, the average bullpen LOB% was 74.1%. This simply means that 74.1% of runners on base did not score with a reliever on the mound. Additionally, only one team’s bullpen had a LOB% under 70% during this stretch - the Rockies at 69.3%. This season, the league average is lower at 72.7%, but more notably, we currently have ELEVEN teams below 70%:
| Team | LOB% | Team | LOB% |
|---|---|---|---|
| Twins | 69.3% | Tigers | 67.2% |
| Athletics | 68.9% | Rays | 6.3% |
| Giants | 68.1% | Rockies | 66.2% |
| Rangers | 68.0% | Royals | 65.5.% |
| Padres | 67.9% | Braves | 64.9% |
| Mariners | 67.4% |
Most of these teams are not very good, so I’m not saying you should expect them all to win a lot more. However, we should expect all of them to positively regress in some way moving forward, especially the teams at the very bottom. And in the big picture, we should see less blown leads late in games for the rest of the season.
Picks Results
The MLB season got off to a very hot start for my model, but has stalled out a bit as we've been floating around 40 units the past couple weeks. Because of this, I made a few tweaks to the way my projections are calculated and that work is already paying off. I can’t fully backtest the changes since that would involve testing every line-up from every game, but the results so far are promising.
MLB Clutchwrap Supreme: 158-150, +37.2u (8.5% ROI)
Model Picks (Over 3% Edge): 63-55, +27.8u (11.2% ROI)
To learn more about my model, check out this article!
That wraps up this week's edition of the #FastBreakFriday Newsletter! Hope you all have a fun and profitable weekend. Be sure to follow me on Twitter and turn on notifications for my tweets so you don't miss a single pick!
-Stephen
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All information and picks given out are for informational and entertainment purposes only. This information is not intended for any use which might promote any illegal activity or violate any of your local, state or federal laws. I do not share in any gains, nor am I liable for any losses that may occur as a result of the use of any information, recommendations, opinions, or picks provided. Although I may display past results, past performance is not a guarantee of future results. Some of the hyperlinks within this email may be affiliate links. If you have a gambling problem please visit Gamblers Anonymous.
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