Baseball Odds

One of the things that online sportsbook experts crave is consistency. Nothing throws off a betting system more than an unknown factor or an MLB manager who likes to experiment with his pitching rotation. The need for consistency is something that bettors and MLB players have in common. As a sports betting online MLB betting enthusiast, it is important that you understand the significance of a pitching rotation in determining your World Series futures betting.

When you watch the moves that a MLB team makes in the offseason, you will notice that the big name pitchers are usually the first players to get grabbed by teams. A young team will need a cornerstone pitcher to build a staff around and an experienced team will need another ace to improve its World Series chances. You can tell a lot about a team based on its pitching rotation. For example, the 2011 and 2012 Boston Red Sox had one of the most potent offenses in the league but one of the most inconsistent pitching rotations as well. The Red Sox did not make any significant changes to the rotation between those two seasons, so the results were the same each year.

If the Toronto Blue Jays win games with the same pitching rotation intact all season, then that is a team that will be a strong contender for a World Series title. If the Jays are constantly changing pitchers around in the rotation and moving guys in and out of the bullpen, then there is no consistency for the team to follow and that team will not be a World Series contender.

The online sportsbooks know that MLB managers treat the playoffs much differently than the regular season. Only in the playoffs would a MLB manager put his pitching ace in the bullpen to prepare to pitch in the 12th inning of game seven of a championship series. Under normal circumstances, that pitching ace would never be near the bullpen during the game. But things change during the playoffs, and that is why it is best to analyze the managers and not the players when trying to determine how important pinch hitting is to a World Series contender.

One of the most famous sports betting World Series pictures of all time is the one of Kirk Gibson in the 1988 World Series rounding the bases and pumping his arms in victory. What did Gibson do? He came off the bench and hit a pinch hit home run that won game one of the 1988 World Series. The thing that made it significant is that he did it with injured legs. The only thing that Gibson could do was hit a home run. If he hit the ball anywhere else, the game would have been over.

The MLB blogs love talking about the Gibson home run because it is the perfect example of how a pinch hitter can win important games in a World Series run. Was manager Tommy Lasorda taking a huge chance with Gibson? No, he wasn't. Gibson had a good history against pitcher Dennis Eckersley and Lasorda had a history of using pinch hitters in clutch situations. If you know the manager's tendencies in your World Series betting, then the added element of a clutch pinch hitter becomes important to your betting system.

Sports betting sites will analyze just about everything to do with a MLB baseball team when it comes to picking a World Series winner. If you watch enough baseball, you will hear analysts talk about the importance of the bullpen when it comes to winning a World Series. It is not so much the players that are in the bullpen, it is how the manager uses those players that counts.

Online betting experts know that, when the playoff come around, a bullpen starts to break down. Players that are used to doing middle relief may be asked to pitch one inning. Starters will often get put into the bullpen on a given night to try and give the team a chance to play the next day. It is not unusual to see six or seven pitchers cycled through a game to try and get the win. But when you are evaluating bullpens to see who can win the big games, you need to look right at the set-up man and the closer.

A manager will move most of his pitchers around and ask then to pitch out of the bullpen in situations they are not comfortable with, but he will rarely touch his set-up man and closer. MLB blogs go on at length about how mystical the set-up man and closer dynamic can be. The set-up man comes in during the eighth inning to shut down the opposition, and then the close comes in to win the game in the ninth inning. The team that has the best set-up man and closer combination is usually the one that wins it all in October.