When going through a rare, tough stretch in baseball, it can absolutely be a big plus to reflect on what can, and does, sometimes go wrong in sports gaming. This article was originally released in the summer of 2007 but with what has gone on for me in mid-May of 2008, it is absolutely the perfect time to dust this one off and revisit it! Positive reflection can be a big boost in snapping a tough stretch.

When you wager frequently on baseball totals you will find yourself falling victim to “bad breaks” at times. That’s simply the “nature of the business” as they say. It’s one that you must understand if you’re going to be able to endure the ups and downs of baseball betting. In particular, when you wager on Overs in baseball, you will soon realize that runs certainly don’t always equate in equal proportion to hits. This can quickly become a source of frustration but the key is to understand the positive and negative cycles. You will then be better able to navigate them.

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A rough way of calculating what kind of run total you can expect in a baseball game is by simply taking 50% of the hits. Roughly for every two hits a major league team gets one run will cross the plate. Testing this theory in the 2007 season proves it to be quite valid as adding up all the runs for all 30 teams and dividing by all the hits for all 30 teams gives us a percentage of 51.4% as we near the midway point of the season. This is why frustration can reach the boiling point when you get involved with betting on Overs in games that see plenty of hits and baserunners but yet don’t produce the corresponding runs. As you might expect, I am unfortunately speaking from experience here.

After a great baseball run from early May through beyond the middle of June, it has been a frustrating ten days. As I type this in the latter part of June I still have the “glazed over” feeling of watching “missed opportunities” on a nightly basis. When you handicap Overs in the baseball you know the first key to cashing in a winning ticket is getting baserunners. You’re not going to win many overs on solo homers alone so you need to be involved with games where runners are on base often. Of course bases on balls can help you but the real key to how many baserunners are produced simply comes down to hitting. Handicapping the batter versus pitcher match-ups based on situational handicapping, hot streaks, factoring in the weather, lefty/righty issues, etc. Those are the keys to handicapping. The fact is that if you get hits the runs will normally follow. Notice the key word there being ‘normally’.

When the runs versus hits ratio is not working out you will instead find yourself stuck in a slump and that’s precisely what has hit me at the time of this article. Now the key question becomes how to snap out of it? First and foremost is to evaluate your plays so you understand what is going wrong with them. We all make bad picks at times but the key is finding out how many picks are truly bad beats too. Sometimes you can handicap a game perfectly and still lose. That’s a bad break, a definite bad beat, and it happens to us all. Once you’ve established that the majority of your recent losses are bad beats that is a key variable to understanding that slumps do happen. They happen to the best of us and one must always remember to stay true to what has made them successful in the first place. It is important to note that if you start changing methodologies midway through a season you will likely end up hurting yourself in the long run.

Above and beyond “battling through” a tough stretch, it is important to understand some of the key components of run production. Some teams are filled with clutch hitters and a solid 1-9 lineup. The Detroit Tigers are a prime example of that. Some teams simply can’t produce runs no matter how favorable the situation is. A team like the Washington Nationals is a perfect example of that type of club. Another definite key is understanding a team’s current situation. Sometimes a team will be red hot offensively where it seems the entire lineup is just “feeling it”. At other times a team will be stuck in an offensive slump where the lineup is simply not able to produce any clutch hits with runners on base. Keep these factors in mind but also remember that, no matter what, there will be times when the bad breaks far outweigh the good ones. It happens…even to the “best of them”. It’s happened to me far too often the past ten days. The key is how to respond and, there is no doubt, the response will be a positive one. As always, best of luck in all your gaming from Scott Rickenbach.