OK, well seems there is some appetite for baseball betting so I am going to spend a little longer on it going forward.

I am also aware there is a pretty big push for me to get things up a bit earlier, so I will also try to do that in the future.  Apologies in advance for this being last minute.

I have loads of good tidbits on baseball I am happy to pass onto you guys if people do care for them.

Apologies in advance if this goes straight over your head.  You may need to read some bits a few times to get your head around it, but hopefully you will eventually enjoy it.  And if so this stuff opens up a whole new world of sports betting opportunities… here goes…

Boston Red Sox @ Oakland A’s

I am going to take Hill’s 10/11 on young All-Star, Clay Buchholz, of the Boston Red Sox to beat the original sabermetricians themselves, the Oakland A’s – who came up trumps for BOTW at the weekend.

The A’s are also sending a good young pitcher to the mound in Gio Gonzalez, but I expect the mighty Red Sox offense to be a bit too much for him.  Gonzalez is certainly a major league standard pitcher and has decent upside, but he is far from the finished article at this stage.

For those that don’t know their baseball, the Boston Red Sox are an offensive machine.

One of the “basic-advanced” metrics used in modern baseball analysis is a statistic called “On Base plus Slugging” (OPS).  This is quite a simple metric and combines a teams “On Base Percentage” (OBP%) and “Slugging Percentage” (SLG%).

OBP represents how often a player “gets on base”, which can be by a number of means in baseball, most commonly via a base hit or drawing a walk (BB) but also includes other things such as being hit by a pitch (HBP).

Firstly, getting out in baseball is a bad thing.  That is commonly accepted.  So OBP basically combines all the outcomes where you don’t get out, and therefore the higher it is, the more effective you are as an offensive player.

SLG% is a metric used to assess a players power.  It weights all base hits achieved depending on whether they are singles, doubles, triples or home runs.  If you care for a detailed explanation you can find one here

So combining these two statistics together gives you this advanced metric, OPS.  It has no specific meaning, but proves to be a great comparative tool between players and teams and it correlates strongly to run production.

A high OPS indicates a team is likely to score a lot of runs.  In layman’s terms, they don’t get out much and while they are busy not getting out they are smashing the ball around like a team of thugs.  Good times.

Now, click here to see a list of all the major league teams, sorted by OPS.

That was pretty predictable I guess.  Point in case, the Red Sox are no pushovers.  In fact, this OPS has translated into actual results, as the Red Sox have scored more runs than any other team in the major leagues going into tonights games.

Now, you may already be thinking  ”non of this is new to the bookmakers”.  And you would be right.  They are well aware of the offensive prowess of the Red Sox and the fact that they can open up a can of whoop-ass on any given night.

But what I don’t believe is accurately priced into this market is what you discover if you have a closer look at Gio Gonzalez’ statistics – in particular his walk rates.

GG is a talented pitcher, but he has “control issues” as a baseball scout would say.  He doesn’t throw enough strikes.

This impacts a multitude of things which I won’t go into in detail here before this post turns into a two hour monologue.

But in summary, the Red Sox are probably the worst team in the world to face if you have control issues.  The success of their entire franchise is based on taking their walks, being selective and wearing pitchers out (evidence).

Looking at Gonzalez’ game log, you will see that he has had a very consistent year with his ERA floating around the 3.50 – 4.00 threshold all season.  This is just above average for a major league pitcher.

However, if you dig a little deeper, he has had some rather erratic starts.  Back on the 22nd of May he pitched 8 innings of 2-hit baseball against my very own San Franciso Giants.  Elite stuff on the face of it.

However, the Giants are one of the most impatient teams in the whole of the major leagues.  They like to hack away and  regularly go down flailing against such pitchers swinging at pitches that aren’t really there to be hit.

This approach is a bit like turning up at the Nou Camp and deciding to play four upfront.  It ain’t going to fly.

Here are Gonzalez’ lines this season against the Red Sox and teams directly comparable to the Red Sox – the Tampa Bay Rays, the New York Yankees and the Texas Rangers.

Gio Gonzalez vs. High OPS teams 2010

Opponent	Innings	Runs	Earned Runs
NYY	4.1	5	5
TB	7	3	3
TEX	4	4	4
BOS	5	3	3
NYY	4	5	5
Total	24.1	20	20

As you can see this is pretty ugly, and results in an “Earned Run Average” (ERA) of circa 7.5 runs per 9 innings pitched.

Although clearly not a huge sample, these teams do not score at a 7 run clip against your average MLB starter, which we already established GG is.

And this is the type of deeper analysis I don’t believe is currently carried out by the UK bookmakers.  They have a pricing model that will run out some pretty decent prices and in the most part it is pretty accurate (and more than sufficient for the UK market I should add).

But are they considering the finer styles of each pitcher and ballclub?  Are they considering how the teams score their runs and how the pitchers allow them, or simply how many and how often?

That we don’t know, but I am pretty confident that your average market maker isn’t that focussed on Kevin Youkilis’ pitches-seen-per-plate-appearance and isn’t aware that Gio Gonzalez is one of the top 5 mlb pitchers in BB/9 allowed.

And as a result, they haven’t priced this game with the Red Sox as a 4/6 favourite as they should have.

So there you have it.  There is my first little baseball case study .  What do we think guys?  Keen to get your thoughts and gauge the appetite for more…

Asta la vista.

BOTW: 4pts on the Boston Red Sox to beat the Oakland A’s @ 10/11