Time for some baseball!!!

[tippy]

Wed 2/28 901 Florida Marlins +115
1:05PM (EST) 902 St Louis Cardinals -130

Wed 2/28 903 Detroit Tigers +103
1:10PM (EST) 904 New York Mets -118

Wed 2/28 905 Colorado Rockies +112
3:05PM (EST) 906 Chicago White Sox -127

Wed 2/28 907 Minnesota Twins +110
7:05PM (EST) 908 Boston Red Sox -125

[ImNew]

I'm on New York Mets -105, also raising my base amount to $300 a pop since I hit 30k yesterday.

[whipsaw]

bet them preseason dogs, boys

[MicroBob]

These are games involving lots of double-A and triple-A players and neither team is trying to win.

Some teams might take them more competitively than others though if you have a Lasorda-type manager or something.

Studies of past spring-training records can give you an indication of which managers might have such leanings.

I seem to remember some really crappy spring records from the Yankees so Joe Torre might be the opposite of this which perhaps makes fading them +EV. Especially since their popularity helps give decent odds on the other side.

I wouldn't mind having more knowledge of the double-A players that are supposed to play in that day's game...because they aren't all created equal you know.
Getting more info on each team's specific pitching rotation for the day can help a little bit.

But you also need to know which pitchers go along more gradually through the spring. Some guys will barely throw a curve-ball in their first outings meaning they can get completely lit-up and they won't really care.

There are lots of factors here. And much of that might never make it into the line I'm guessing...seriously.
And I'm guessing isn't considered by most fans either.


But outside getting any of that additional info to sway your opinion I very much agree that betting the dogs in these games is usually the way to go.
This is only a hunch though. I'm not sure that it's actually +EV.
Just a theory based on getting better odds between two mostly evenly matched teams who don't care diddly about trying to win.

[onlinebeginner]

what's a good tool for studying past spring training records?

[knicknut]

Yeah, can someone find historical spring training results? I'd expect them to be highly autocorrelated. I can't find any.

[MicroBob]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'autocorrelated'.

Can you define that for me please?

[MicroBob]

I didn't get on in time to get the early games.

But I got COL +119 vs. CHW.
And COL is up 11-4 in the 5th so that's looking good.

Also have MIN +114 vs. BOS tonight.
A little hype for it because Schilling is pitching. But I think that's close to meaningless and just means that the public will want to bet BOS more than they should.


DET at +103 won at the Mets today.

STL at -130 held down the fort though.

I remain convinced that even blindly betting the dogs could be +EV in early spring-training but, again, I don't know that. It's just a hunch/theory without having looked at any of the numbers.
finding just a little bit of information could make it even EV of course if you know what to do with that info.


Knowing a little bit about the Florida geography could also help imo.
If it's a 2-hour ride away I think the visiting team is far more likely to send more of the double-A guys and rest more of the star guys so that should be factored in.

Florida st St. Louis for example. They both train in the same complex in Jupiter and play their 'home' games in the same stadium. So the only 'home' advantage that STL had in that game was that they got to bat last.

[knicknut]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm not sure what you mean by 'autocorrelated'.

Can you define that for me please?

[/ QUOTE ]

In layman's terms, it means previous time periods' results are good predictors of future period results. Its results are correlated with itself (in the past)--autocorrelated.

Any progress on the historical standings? Still drawing a blank here and hesitant to throw my money in... I suspect they're highly inefficient, though.

[MicroBob]

no, I haven't really looked very hard and am not as serious about this stuff as a lot of people on here.
Don't count on me to track anything down.