The summer can be a pretty lonely time for the sports gambler. NBA basketball is damn near unpredictable and betting baseball seems so convoluted and degenerate that it’s difficult to take the idea seriously.

That is unless you have a solid system you follow that simplifies what you’re looking for when wagering on baseball. And that’s where we come in: our baseball system drastically simplifies picking games and has gotten us through several summers with a little more (and no less) change in our pockets.

Of course, the system does nothing to help with you feeling like a degenerate for gambling on baseball. That one’s on you, pal. Just ask our boy Pete Rose (or that piece of ass getting his autograph).

Basic Premise

Vegas sportsbooks make their money off the juice.

If you don’t know what “juice” or “vig” is, I don’t think this article is your cup of tea, but just in case you are going through a midlife crisis and need to pick up a bad habit to make yourself feel better about being old, here is a short explanation:

If a person places a $110 bet on the 49ers to beat the Falcons by 3 and the 49ers cover the 3 point spread, the person wins $100. However, if the 49ers don’t cover the spread, the person loses the entire $110. The $10 difference is the juice. This is how a Vegas sportsbook profits.

I imagine that if you are reading this article you understand how gambling on football works. But imagine how nice it would be if you didn’t have to pay the juice; you would only have to pick 50% of games correctly to break even. By implementing our Baseball gambling system you only need to pick approximately 43% of the games correctly to break even.

How Betting on Baseball Works

The thing that you may not know is how gambling on baseball works. Here is an example of what a baseball line looks like:

Disregard everything accept for the +165 next to the Yankees and the -175 next to the Red Sox. What this means is that if you bet $100 on the Yankees you can win $165; if you bet on the Red Sox you have to bet $175 to win only $100.

With baseball there is no “spread” like in football. You are simply trying to pick the winning team in any given baseball game. You play the odds on winning established by Vegas.

Alright, that brings Gambling 101 to a close. For all you seasoned degenerates out there, I apologize for taking up three minutes of your time with that elementary refresher course.

The System

In this system, you exclusively bet underdogs. So for any team you bet $100 the payout will always be over $100. The goal is that over the course of the entire season you will pick approximately 50% of the games correctly, allowing your profit to become the “juice” as every payout will be more than you wagered. In essence, the bane of your existence during the football season becomes your lifesaver during baseball season.

But obviously, you can’t just pick every underdog in every game and hope that half the underdogs win.

How to Pick the Teams

On any one day there are several games, so you need to narrow down which games to wager on by checking a series of indicators.

1) Check the Standings:

In baseball, always remember: you are what you are that season.

These are the NL Central standings as of the morning of May 13^th, 2007 (Mother’s Day).

Side Note: I know some of you are thinking, “This degenerate is writing an article on how to gamble on baseball on Mother’s Day, what a pathetic loser.” I have no rebuttal to that line of reasoning. Being a lawyer you learn when it is time to concede an argument. This is one of those times.

Anyways, let’s take a look at the standings so you know what to look for when deciding on which team to back.

First, the Brewers historically suck, but this year they are very good. After 36 games they are the best team in baseball. Do not miss a chance to jump on their bandwagon. Think about baseball the last couple years. Two years ago the White Sox came out of no where to win the World Series, and last year the historically terrible Tigers exited obscurity to make the World Series.

Second, look at the Astros’, Cubs’, Cardinals’, and Pirates’ road record in the 5th column. Despite the fact that all these teams have slightly below .500 records, they are all .500 or better on the road. All four of these teams were underdogs in the majority of these road games. Look for these types of trends. This road trend really illustrates the point of this system. If you had bet on all four of these teams on every single one of their road games this season your record would one game over .500 (36-35). However, you would be well ahead of the money because each underdog win is for over $100 (the + line).

Third, I like to look for teams that are playing better than .500 baseball in their last ten games. Baseball is a game of streaks. Teams go through hot and cold streaks, but, more importantly, so do hitters. I don’t really worry about whether or not any individual player is in a slump, but if a team is playing above .500 ball in their last ten games, you can feel comfortable that no more than one key hitter on that team is slumping.

2) Look Over the Schedule:

Peruse the schedule quickly. You want to check how many days in a row a team has played. You want a feel for how tired your team is in general. If a team has been on a long road trip, the players are probably worn out and ready to get home. More importantly, check the scores of the last 5-7 games a team has played. You want to get a feel for how tired the team’s bullpen is going into the next game. If a team has a particularly rundown bullpen, you probably do not want to wager on them.

Remember: we are looking for underdogs. So if the Giants bullpen is really worn out, you might want to bet against them even though Barry Zito is starting for the Giants and the Giants are a heavy favorite. More likely than not, Zito is not pitching the last 2+ innings of the game.

3) Team’s Ability to Score Runs:

I like to track the top 5-7 scoring teams in baseball. Success at the plate can cover up a lot of problems on a ball club, especially in a single game setting.

For example, when I hear the argument, “The Yankees can’t win the World Series with that starting rotation,” I think, “I don’t give a shit; I bet they can outslug the Rangers tonight.”

Teams that can score a lot of runs but have weak pitching can be great teams to bet on, which leads into the entire point of this system…

4) Price, Price, Price:

In this system you never will bet a team that is not at least +101. You must understand that you are not trying to pick every game correctly. You are looking to pick 50% or better and take home the juice as your profit. So there will be games where you bet the Royals at +185 against the Tigers even though you have a strange man crush on Jeremy Bonderman. As long as you are getting the right “price” you want to bet the underdog. That win will do more for you than Bonderman will in the long run (maybe).

Conclusion

To implement this system successfully you have to grit your teeth and understand that you need to stick with the system through ups and downs, keeping in mind you are always going to be betting on the team that is “supposed to lose”.

Now that we’ve broken it down for you check the right sidebar of StillAwesome.com daily for our daily baseball picks. We’ll be using this system exclusively. We also suggest using our Bodog links to setup your online account. From our experience, Bodog is far and away the most professional and user friendly of all the gaming sites out there.

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