Better baseball betting

By Jeff Haney

Wednesday, May 7, 2008 | 2 a.m.

Sometimes the best books for bettors to read contain virtually no information on point spreads, money lines or anything else having to do with gambling.

The classic example is the annual Blue Ribbon college basketball yearbook, which many hoops bettors swear by, even though it does not target gamblers specifically.

The latest example, though, is “The Book: Playing the Percentages in Baseball” by Tom Tango, Mitchel Lichtman and Andrew Dolphin, three sabermatricians working in the vein of groundbreaking authors such as Bill James, Pete Palmer and John Thorn.

The authors examine hundreds of concepts linked to baseball strategy. Although their research and results appeal to anyone who takes a “thinking person’s” approach to baseball, much of it also carries value for those who bet the sport — even though “The Book” barely mentions handicapping.

The 384-page paperbound book ($21.95), published in 2007 by Potomac Books, is available in wide release, including at the Gambler’s Book Shop at 630 South 11th St. in Las Vegas.

The following are thumbnail highlights of a few of the concepts that could appeal to baseball bettors:

1. Hitters’ streaks

Bettors who consider how many players in a team’s starting lineup are “hot,” or “streaking,” in handicapping a baseball game could be making a mistake. The authors used computer analysis to study how every batter in the major leagues performed during and after “hot” and “cold” streaks of various lengths to try to determine whether that was a good predictor of performance in the immediate future.

For example, each player had up to 158 possible five-game streaks each season, starting with the fifth game each year.

The authors’ conclusion: “Knowing that a hitter has been in or is in the midst of a hot or cold streak has little predictive value.”

Tread carefully if you’re taking hitters’ streaks into account when creating a betting line you hope is more accurate than the oddsmakers’.

2. Pitchers’ streaks

You’ll often hear baseball handicappers talk about starting pitchers who are in “good form,” or who have found their “groove” in predicting games vis-a-vis the betting line.

It turns out they’re on solid ground here, according to the results of the authors’ comprehensive study of all pitchers’ performances during four complete recent seasons.

Their conclusion: “If a pitcher has pitched exceptionally well for four consecutive appearances or so, we can expect him to continue to pitch better than his norm for at least one more appearance.”

3. Hitters who “own” specific pitchers, and vice versa

I remember reading about Earl Weaver’s keeping track on index cards of how his hitters fared against individual pitchers around the league. If a pinch-hitting situation arose, Weaver supposedly would refer to his cards and choose the batter who was 2-for-5 (.400) against the particular pitcher ahead of the guy who was 1-for-4 (“only” .250).

It’s possible Weaver ignored the danger of small sample sizes.

The authors of “The Book” demonstrate that believing a batter “owns” a particular pitcher is a dubious line of thinking at best: “When a particular batter has faced a particular pitcher 200 or 300 times, come back and we’ll talk. Maybe.”

4. Platooning based on groundball and flyball tendencies

Also in the excellent chapter called “Mano a Mano,” the authors show that like other forms of platooning, doing so based on the groundball and flyball tendencies of hitters and pitchers has real results on the field.

Groundball pitchers, for example, really do “own” groundball hitters, and flyball pitchers “own” flyball hitters. A manager facing a groundball pitcher, then, would want as few groundball hitters in the lineup as possible, all things considered, because “groundball pitchers eat them up,” according to “The Book.”

The authors explain that unlike lefty/righty platoons, most major league managers do not make use of this kind of platoon advantage. This is valuable information for bettors who can spot such situations, because it might not be built into the betting line.