Baseball Betting Analysis

I've decided to use the analysis I conducted on NFL season over/unders and apply it to Baseball.

The first thing that I did was compare the Vegas estimated total wins for the baseball against the possible number of total wins. I added all the teams over/unders and got 2441.5. Which is amazing because the baseball season only consists of 2430 games. That leaves 11.5 wins unaccounted for. The reason that this occurs is that most sports fans like to bet on their team to do well. Because off all this action on the overs, Vegas moves the lines to attract the betting on the other side.

Not only are the over/unders inflated on the aggregate, they are also somewhat normalized. During the 2009 season there were 5 teams that had less than 70 wins, Vegas predicts that no team this year will have below 70 wins. There have been at least 4 teams that go below 70 wins each of the last 5 years. If I could make a prop bet that at least three teams will have less than 70 wins, I would take it.

Here is a chart that compares this years predictions vs. last years results:
For comparison, I took the variance in number of wins between 2010 and 2009. Vegas predictions have a variance of 46.56 while the actual variance last year was 126.40.

I believe most of those 11 phantom wins that Vegas is predicting will affect teams in the bottom half of the league. Fans being hopelessly optimistic will always believe (and bet) that their teams will do better than expected. For football I actually compared the teams to their schedule and used Vegas's own odds to predict how well they would do against other teams. Since I don't have time to compare a 2430 game MLB season, I think I'll just bet the under on each of the bottom 7 teams. I'll throw a little more money on the ones at the very bottom.

Even though I don't know much about baseball I can still confidently predict the results of teams that I cannot name a player on the roster. 6 months from now I'll see how good my predictions were.

Bets:
Pittsburgh Pirates - under 70
Son Diego Padres - under 71
Toronto Blue Jays - under 71
Washington Nationals- under 71
Kansas City Royals - under 71.5
Baltimore Orioles - under 74
Houston Astros - under 74.5

NFL Bets Analysis

See the previous posts on my NFL betting strategy here and here.

This year, I tested the waters of NFL season over/under bets. I made this statement before the season began.

Again, the theme was bet on unders, and most likely there will be more teams that finish with less than 5 wins than Vegas predicts.

My three bets went 2-0-1 with Tampa Bay and Detroit both hitting the under and Miami resulting in a push. Also my prediction that there will be more teams with less than 5 wins than Vegas predicts was spot on. Vegas predicted there would be one, there were actually 5.

Check out this sweet chart I made. Then check out the badass graph I made.



So I did the full analysis to see if my system of betting would have proved profitable this year. With my system I would have bet on 18 unders and 14 overs. I would have ended up going 18-11-3. So in theory if I would have place $100 on each bet I would be up $700 at the end of the season. But the way sports betting works is that payouts aren't always 1:1. Usually you have to bet $110 to make $100. So if I bet $100 on each team and went 16-16 I wouldn't necessarily break even. I would actually be down like $160. Some bets pay out better than 2:1 though. This is because bookies will change the payouts to get even betting on both sides. This season even though I would have won 7 more than I lost I would have only made $535.

But one of the issues with betting on every team is that my systems sometimes finds the Vegas odds to be nearly identical to my odds. Then putting a bet down is like a coin flip. But it can be worse if the payouts are less than 1:1. So if I paired down my system to only the biggest differences between my predictions and Vegas odds and bet those I would have gone 10-6 and won $335.

While I've only looked at one season I am confidant that my systems works pretty well. But the real question is if my system is a better predictor of wins then the sportsbooks are. As a side note, my system relies on the Vegas odds to make my predictions. So I guess my systems relies on Vegas to be at least somewhat close to the actual odds, and from what I can tell they are.

So, I looked at the total difference between the actual results and both Vegas and my system. Vegas was off by 61 wins, while I was off by 58.33 wins. My variance was also 1.61 wins compared to 1.65 for Vegas. But I'm not sure that this comparison is valid because Vegas odds are in increments of .5 and my predictions are decimals.

I like the idea of betting the season over/under because the bet can minimize the randomness of football outcomes by aggregating a teams performance over 16 games. Sure they might get upset a couple of times, but they might also pull a few of their own. At the end of the day usually they are who we thought they were. So will I take this action next season? You betcha.

NFL First Quarter Results

Of my three NFL over under bets all of them are still looking like very good wagers. Remember I bet Detroit to win less than 5 games, Tampa Bay to win less than 6 and Miami to win less than 8. After the first 4 weeks of the season the three teams have a combined record of 2-10.

Detriot
To be on pace to get five games they would need 1.25 wins by now. They are at 1. They still have games against St. Louis and Cleveland, so this bet is by no means in the bag. As they just need to go 4-8 the rest of the season to make me look like a fool.

Tampa Bay
Tampa has still yet to win a game. To be on pace they would need to have 1.5 wins by now. This is a team that has been outscored by 53 points so far. For them to win they would have to go 6-6 the rest of the way. This bet is pretty safe.

Miami
Miami won their first game today. So they are now 1-3. They are also behind pace to reach 8 wins. Miami is not playing terrible football but I would be surprised if they went 7-5 the rest of the season. Especially when 4 of the remaining games are against the Jets and the Pats.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

One of the benefits of living on the west coast is that I get to watch the college football lines come out on Sunday night. Usually I have a pretty good idea about what the lines will look like. If I see a line that is far different than I expect it I know it might be a good game to bet on.

When the line came out Sunday night for the Michigan-Michigan State game I sat in awe on my floor. I had expected a Michigan -7 line. This means that Michigan was expected to win by 7 points. The actual line was only Michigan -1. I had a few guesses to why the line might be so low, but I mainly figured that the line was low because on Sunday night it appeared that Tate Forcier might be out/limited for this game. When I read that Tate was expected to be fine for the game I rushed home Monday hoping the line hadn't moved to much against Michigan. When I got home I couldn't believe it. The line had moved to Michigan +0. Basically saying you just had to pick the winner. I took line at Michigan +0 smugly thinking that the line might fall to as much as Mich -3. But I've sat in disbelief as the line keeps inching up to where it sits now at Michigan +2.5.

I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS. The #22 ranked undefeated Michigan team is 2.5 point underdogs against a 1-3 Michigan State squad whose sole win is against D-2 Montana State. I mean MSU was 14.5 point favorites when they lost to Central Michigan. What does Vegas see in this MSU team? That two of their O-Lineman are questionable for the game? WTF?

Also an O/U of 57.5 seems mighty low considering these are both highly offensive teams with shaky defenses. I don't think a score of 28-25 or higher is out of the question, but O/U's are tricky things to bet on so I'll hold off on this at least until a decent weather report comes out.

NFL Team Analysis

Last night I finished my lengthy analysis of my calculated expected wins vs, Vegas odds. But while I was typing up this post I started to realize that teams bye weeks weren't lining up with this season schedule. Then I realized that I had done my analysis using the 2005 NFL schedule. Which means I had to redo everything. But all the information from the first post is still accurate. Again, the theme was bet on unders, and most likely there will be more teams that finish with less than 5 wins than Vegas predicts.

Tonight I redid part of my analysis, but unfortunately I didn't not have time to analyze every team, but I focused on teams that were expected to go under .500 and that had decent payouts.

After spending many additional hours developing odds for each team I am disappointed to realize that my analysis indicates that one of the safest bets is betting against the Detroit Lions. This greatly disappointments me.

My method was to determine a teams chance at winning by taking the square of the teams expected wins and dividing by the sum of both teams expected wins. So the odds of a home team winning are Home^2/(Home^2+Away^2). So if the home team was expected to win 7 games and the away was expected to win 11, the home teams chance of winning would be 7^2/(7^2+11^2) or about 29%. Using this I ended up with each teams expected number of wins. I then compared them to the over/under odds for that team. In my last post I determined that betting unders is the way to go, because there cannot be 132 wins amongst the 32 teams and there will be a few ties sprinkled in there too.

Here are 3 Under picks that I might consider making.

Detroit Lions, O/U: 4.5, Expected Wins: 3.62, +105
From the numbers it is quite easy to see why there is no likely way this team wins 5 games. They are only playing four teams that are expected to have sub .500 seasons. There opponents are expected to win 8.43 games on average. In order to get the 5 wins they are going to need to beat the four bottom teams they face. But even their computed odds of beating their weakest opponent (St. Louis) is 28%. There odds of winning all 4 is 0.5%. Like I said before, I would be surprised if the worst team in the league gets 5 wins. Plus this bet has a positive payout of $105 for every $100 bet.

Tampa Bay, O/U 5.5, Expected Wins : 4.61, +105
I would write an entire paragraph on how Tampa Bay isn't going to win a single game because they have absolutely no offense. But I'm here to look at quantitative numbers not qualitative. Tampa Bay is only playing ONE team that is expected to go under .500. That team is Miami who is expected to have 7 wins, but maybe you should hold off on this until you finish the entire post. To win this bet Tampa Bay has to win at least 6 games. My calculations indicate that Tampa has about an average 30% chance of winning any given game. Also this is another bet with a better than 2:1 payout.

Miami, O/U 7, Expected Wins: 6.32, +100
Miami doesn't have as much of a difference between my expected number of wins and the Vegas line, but it is still rather large. Miami is playing three games against opponents slated to win less than 8 games, but two of the are the Jets who are expected to win 7.5 games. The real thing to look at is Miami's overall opponents who are picked to win an average 8.84 games. That's some stiff competition for a team trying to win 7 games. Miami only plays one team which is expected to be worse than it, and that is Tampa Bay. For this bet to lose Miami would have to win 8 games in a division where every other team is expected to be better than you. Note: this bet offers even pay.

The one vital aspect to these last two picks are that the teams have to play each other. Not only do they have to play each other, but they are each others easiest game of the season. Both teams are counting on the win to get above their over/under. Miami will not win 7 games with a loss against Tampa Bay, and it will be equally hard for Tampa to win 5 without getting the easy one against Miami. This game should serve as to cover one of the two bets, and then if the winning team doesn't beat their O/U you have a double payout. If these two teams tie, I will be a very happy man.

Again, the great thing about these three bets is that they pay even money or better. Usually in sports betting you have to put up 110 for every 100 you want to win. So these bets should earn some cash.

Initial NFL Betting Analysis

As you all must know, I spend a lot of my spare time doing useless analysis.

But occasionally my statistical analysis can make me money. I spent so much time researching Big Ten college football teams that I've barely had time to look at NFL. I don't like betting NFL games. Mostly because both teams are very well figured out and the odds makers are much more accurate than college football. In College Football I have the edge because I can spend more time evaluating each team in a match up that the guy who has to handicap 60 games. But the only thing about NFL betting that really interests me is betting on regular season wins. Because sport books put out lines on all teams it is possible to look at each team compared to the strength of each team they face. Eventually you create a spreadsheet with each team and the expected wins of each team they play and that looks like this.

And now you can analyze each team compared to the teams they play. I'll do this analysis over the next few nights. A few drawbacks of this analysis are that; each opponent plays different teams and each team has a different strength of schedule which affects their line, the amount you have to risk to win $100 varies with each bet. I.E. right now you have to bet $135 on the lions winning 4.5 games to win $100, but you only have to bet 95 on the Lions winning less than 4.5 games to win $100. So the lines don't necessarily match up evenly.

But the only analysis that I have done is on some overall numbers, comparing predicted outcomes to last years actual outcomes.


The first row of this chart shows that teams are on average overvalued by an eighth of a win. There have to be equal amounts of wins and losses. The reason for this is that there are lots of casual bettors that will bet their team to win more games regardless of the O/U line.

The other noticeable thing about this chart is that there are a lot of teams that are expected to go over .500. This is possible and reasonable, but in order for this to happen there have to be a lot of above average teams and there have to be a good number of terrible teams. But the odds makers are predicting that there aren't. For last year to have 16 teams go over .500 there were 6 teams that achieved less than 5 wins. But this year the bookmakers expect 18 teams to go over .500 with only one team getting less than 5 wins. Either they're expecting all the teams under .500 to go 5-11 or 6-10 or people should start betting the unders.

Also only one team getting over 11 wins? Over the last 5 regular seasons there were an average of 4.6teams getting more that 11 wins a season. Maybe betting overs on some Superbowl favorites is in order.

Overall it appears that the odds makers are coming out pretty conservative. Last year there were 11 teams with over 11 wins or less than 5. Initial lines for this year have only 2 teams falling in those categories. Perhaps tomorrow I should also look at what the lines looked like going into last season.

March Mustache Madness

Tonight is the beginning of the first annual March Mustache Madness NCAA Tournament. The rules are fair, the regulations are fair, the competitive balance is fair. It is a 10 dollar buy in between the menfolk of our house and a few friends. Half of the buy in will go to the person with the best overall bracket. The other half will go to the winner of the mustache competition. Each person will have to pick a mustache team and will not be able to shave as long as their team is still in the tournament. The person with the mustache the longest will win the other half the bet. Some rules:

-Your last shave should be Selection Sunday.
-You must shave all non-stache facial hair at least every other day
-$10 entrance fee
-Winner take all in each category ($50 for the Stache, $50 for the Bracket)

Feel free to start your own mustache brackets.