The beginning of spring training marks the dawn of a new year in Major League Baseball. The 30 MLB teams use the spring camps in Florida and Arizona to get ready for the grind of a 162-game regular season. While most clubs are similar in nature from the prior year, there is always a certain amount of change and turnover in personnel. After a winter of trades and free agent signings, the teams try to come together in a month of exhibition games in March.
The opening of spring training also provides a start for bettors and bookmakers of the sport. Bookmakers will usually post the numbers for the regular season win totals for each MLB club in late February. While bettors must show a great deal of patience to make these wagers, there can be some great opportunities to beat the bookmaker on these season long bets.
The basics
The MLB Regular Season Win Totals are wagered on in the same manner as an over/under bet for a particular game. The bookmaker will post a projected win total for each of the 30 Major League Baseball teams. The bettor will simply wager on whether or not a team will win over or under the amount of games for that particular squad. While a bettor can get an outcome on a baseball game in about three hours, he must wait six months for a decision on an MLB Ov/Un Season Wins wager. So, the player must have some level of patience to make these kind of bets.
Handicapping the numbers
Bookmakers will use a few general concepts to arrive at a win total for each team. He will certainly look at the prior season. The bookmaker will also take into account what the teams did in the off season. An addition or subtraction of an elite player can be worth several wins in a club’s total depending on the circumstances.
For the 2010 season, the defending World Series champion New York Yankees had an initial figure of about 96 victories for its ov/un number. The team won 103 games in 2009. Because it is difficult for even an elite team to win at least 100 games in a season, the bookmaker decided to go with a number that was a little less from the prior year’s outcome. Some bettors may see some value in betting an over based on the record in 2009 while others will lean to an under for a club that might have peaked in the prior season. These kind of chess games between the bettor and bookmaker will continue until the opening of the regular season in April.
