Heading into the Labor Day weekend as the last official holiday of summer, many sports bettors have already shifted their attention to the upcoming football season in the college ranks and the NFL. Week 1 of the new college football season gets underway this weekend, and the first round of NFL games that actually count in the standings takes place the following weekend.
The attraction of betting on sports is about adding some excitement to the action on the field. Yet, it is also about winning money. The first games of a new football season can carry quite a few unknowns. This is especially true in college games where most teams have a number of new players lining up on either side of the ball.
Baseball, on the other hand, is entering its final month of games in an extended 162-game regular-season schedule. This is the time of the year when you should be betting on MLB games. There are enough stats, facts, and betting trends for all 30 teams to handicap any matchup properly. At this point of the year, it becomes rather clear as to which teams are still playing meaningful games and which teams continue to ride out the string.
Staying true to an old betting adage, “there are no such things as locks”, the Detroit Tigers recently stunned the Houston Astros 2-1 on Aug. 21 as +445 road underdogs in what was called the biggest betting upset in baseball over the past 15 years. They closed as +445 underdogs the next night against Houston and lost 6-3. While upsets still happen on a regular basis in MLB games, betting the teams that need to win games this time of the year is a solid betting strategy.
This theory actual excludes division leaders with comfortable leads in the standings to give Houston a pass on that highly improbable loss. When you are almost ten games up and the next best team, you are bound to take a night off once and awhile.
The MLB standings that you do want to pay close attention to are any remaining tight divisional battles as well as the wild card standings for either league. Along with the six division winners, a pair of teams in both the AL and NL will have a one-game wild-card tilt to advance to the best-of-five divisional round playoff series. This actually translates to a handful of teams still in playoff contention in either league.
Betting against a team with nothing on the line is one approach you can take. However, betting a team that desperately needs to win a game could be a better way to find the best value in the MLB money line odds.
T
his is also when a team’s particular win/loss record at home and on the road becomes an essential factor. Road teams usually are underdogs depending on the matchup between each side’s starters. If a team like the Minnesota Twins are set as road underdogs with a winning rate of 65 percent, that could be a good value bet.
Head-to-head division matchups between two teams fighting for their playoff life can also be good games to bet. Since these two teams have already faced one another quite a few times this season, a certain level of familiarity tends to elevate the level of predictability.
The Chicago Cubs are a perfect 6-0 at home against the St. Louis Cardinals this season. However, they are 1-5 in six road games against their bitter NL Central rivals. These two teams will meet six more times in a very tight division race. There are three games in Chicago and three games in St. Louis over the final ten days of the MLB regular season.
