in MLB Betting Trends

Everyone knows that pitching matchups are heavily relied on when it comes to betting on baseball games. Seasoned bettors won’t even contemplate wagering on the sport without consulting the paper or tonight’s hurlers list on BetUS.net. Whenever you see Roger Clemens or Chris Carpenter pitching, you figure it’s usually a safe bet, right? Wrong. Scanning the pitching matchups is not the end all for predicting baseball outcomes.

While the endless stats of professional baseball may seem overwhelming to weed through, there’s one category that is, in my opinion, paramount prior to picking a team for the night. It isn’t a superficial stat such as strikeouts or wins. It’s not losses or hits allowed. Rather, it’s a stat that speaks to trends and to patterns. It’s recent outings. In other words, the most important thing to look at when backing a pitcher is how he recently fared.

Baseball is a game of streaks. Players and teams go on runs and periods of great play. When it comes to pitchers, you don’t want to be backing a guy who has had a couple of bad outings in a row. Who knows how much longer the bad luck will persist? Why be a victim of it? So, even if a pitcher is 12-5 with a 3.25 e.r.a., he might have been 12-2 with a 2.64 e.r.a. three outings ago.

Even staff aces will go through these ruts. Sometimes, star pitchers can be battling nagging injuries and won’t tell anyone. Therefore, these throwers are playing at less than 100% and are costing you money if you’ve bet on them. However, if you were smart enough to check their last three outings, you would have noticed a sharp drop-off in quality innings.

Moreover, pitchers with a losing record could be worth taking a chance on for the night if they’ve pitched well as of late. It’s all in their last few performances and how their team scored runs for them in those starts.

The bottom line is taking a gander at recent outings of pitchers is far more telling than simply relying on the better starter in a given matchup to come through for them.