Starting Out Betting Baseball

[WFDeac]

Hey all,

I am extremely interested in learning about betting baseball in the coming season. I am a college student, and will have plenty of free time throughout the season to learn/read/study for hours each day.

I understand the sabremetric principles. I know ERA, pitcher W/L, batting average, stolen bases are fairly worthless. I know which stats to look at. However, I really have no grasp of how to translate vital statistics into betting. I don't know how to begin to turn raw numbers of individuals into determining the teams chance of winning. Is there anyway I could be lead in the right direction with a book of some sort? I'd be happy to pay to talk to someone knowledgeable.

I've always followed baseball closely and loved the game. I really feel like I have the mind to learn sabremetrics and develop my own system....I just really would like to get kick started in the right direction. I got 790 on my math SAT...I do work well with numbers. Also, I do have a solid bankroll to commit to this endeavor.

Thanks in advance

Andrew

[SumZero]

Do you know any computer coding languages? Do you know any spreadsheet or database access language?

IMO, those will help.

If you can accurately predict the %chance that team A with pitcher Q beats team B with pitcher X you have enough information to win. You can design any number of models to predict that and back test to see if your model is accurate. If you already know about things like DIPS ERA, linear weights, etc. you should be on the right track. Make sure you keep a slice of data to use to avoid type II errors though (you can approximate this by testing your winning algoritm in a shadow betting way before betting).

[WFDeac]

I know spreadsheets and databases pretty well but don't know computer coding...

Is there anywhere I can obtain an easy database of previous results or should I just start sifting manually.

Your post was very helpful SumZero.

Thanks

Andrew