3 Tips For MLB Early Season Betting

Baseball season is here. Let's take a look at 3 tips for betting the MLB early in the year. 

There isn’t a time in the season where the weather matters more than early in the season, especially in some of the cooler areas. Everyone knows to pay attention to the weather at Wrigley. Most people don’t check the weather enough in places like Boston, Cleveland, Detroit, and Minnesota. There are going to be games in the early portion of the season where it is cooler and the winds are blowing in 20 mph or more. Those are great opportunities to look for full game unders or even bet on some player prop unders for that particular game. It can be really tough for the ball to carry much at all in these situations. 

In the long run, underdogs on the moneyline in Major League Baseball have had the best return on investment in the early season. Opening day favorites have covered at a high rate, but between game two of the season and game ten or so of the season, it has been a great period for the underdogs. Why would the underdogs have value at this time? Everyone thinks they have a chance for a good season at the start of the year. Hope springs eternal as some would say during this period. That is the single biggest reason underdogs are valuable early in the season. Secondarily, there are enough changes on team rosters that it is difficult for the oddsmakers to set a fair value on some of the worst teams from the previous year. 

You can’t lock in an amazing season in the first couple weeks, but you can ruin a season in the first couple weeks. I’ve seen too many bettors go all out with huge volume early in baseball, only to get discouraged and/or ruin their bankroll before you get to the middle of April. Baseball season is the ultimate long grind. I recommend going with a more cautious approach early on and then raising your volume after there are more data points to evaluate teams with a few weeks into the season. After there are a decent amount of data points, you can then look for regression based signs and try to get ahead of the betting market. 

Baseball season is a long grind, and going into the season with the right mindset is important.