For what it’s worth, the opening game of the 2025 season is just one week away.  We again have an early series this season, on March 18-19.  This season, MLB will be staging a season opener in Tokyo, Japan, featuring the defending World Series champion Dodgers and the Cubs in a pair of games at the Tokyo Dome.

The last time that I posted an MLB play on this site was right before Game 5 of the 2024 World Series.  I had the Yankees 1^st 5 and full game MLs in a 2-unit parlay.  I lost that bet, mostly because of some atrocious Yankee defense in a horrific 5^th inning meltdown. It was a disappointing end to what ended up still being a very good season that left me +313.81 units for the2024 season. 

The MLB season is a grind and it takes a toll. The older I get, the heavier that toll seems to get.  When the 2024 season ended, I needed a long break.  I’ve been mostly in hibernation mode since, and I’ve done very little actual betting.  I did bet a few NFL games in September and October, but that was it.  I wasn’t doing all that well and I wasn’t having any fun.  I was just too damned tired.  Truth be told, I don’t really like betting the NFL anymore.  It’s about who wins or losses.  It’s about who “covers the spread” and the lines have gotten so damned tight that the spread reduces way too many NFL games to nothing more than a crap shoot.  The obvious solution should have been to bet NFL games on the ML, but the problem is that those MLs have become just too damned expensive.  I also tried betting two-team 6-point teasers, but at most books the juice on those bets has gone up.  It just doesn’t make much sense to me, so I stopped.

I did get involved in PG’s NFL and CBB contests, but that was more for my own amusement than anything else.  Much like the NFL, CBB betting is also all about the spread.   While I did OK, the spread still reduces too many games to crap shoots.  That’s why I’m sticking to MLB.  I want to bet on ho wins and who loses.  It’s really that simple. 

I’ve seen a lot of MLB seasons come and go, but I still get excited every spring much like I did when I was a kid growing up in central MA.  2025 is no exception.  I’m not ready, but I never am.  However, ready or not the start of the 2025 season is a week away. 

I will again post my MLB plays this season, “God willing and if the creek don’t rise” as the old saying goes.  If you aren’t familiar with me or my process, no problem.  If you are, you can skip the rest of this.  Either way, allow me to again briefly explain my approach to betting MLB. 

The first thing that you should know is that I’m a stat guy.  In my experience, the numbers don’t lie and they are an integral part of how I handicap MLB.  I use them to compare teams and players.  I look at starting pitchers, bullpens, offenses and to some extent, defenses.  That said, it should be noted that early in the season, the numbers can only tell us so much.  The only stats that we’ll have are from previous seasons and with free agency, some big trades, and some major injuries a lot has changed since the end of last season.  That makes any early statistical extrapolation very iffy, so please take mine or anyone else’s, for that matter, with a healthy dose of skepticism.

You should also know that I like betting on good teams, especially when playing against bad teams.  In today’s MLB, there exists a significant gap between what I’ll call “the haves” and “the have nots” and that gap seems to be ever widening.  There are only a handful of teams that can even afford to compete in today’s MLB.  We have the big money franchises like the Dodgers, the Yankees, the Mets, the Red Sox and maybe the Cubs and then there’s everyone else.  It’s all about money and with free agency and no real salary cap, the playing field is as far from level as it’s ever been.   That’s why big favorites usually win and that’s the next thing that you need to understand.  The reality is that the track record of big favorites (-180 or more) is incredibly strong, around 80% last time I checked.

The problem for us as bettors is that is that when we bet those big favorites individually on the ML, they are just too damned expensive.  You’d have to win about three of every four bets to show any real profit; and even if you managed to do that, your profit margin wouldn’t be all that great.   Still, since big favorites have such a stellar track record, all we need to do is figure out a profitable way to bet on them.

I’ve been betting MLB for more years than I’d care to admit to.  For most of that time, I muddled around .500, but I’ve never had as much success as I’ve had since the 2019 season, when I started using two-team ML parlays.  For example, in 2018, while I finished with a great W-L record, 145 games over .500, I only won +15.59 units for the season?  That was pretty typical of my results back then, good W-L record, but just a small if any profit.  That was because I liked betting on good teams back then as well and those teams were almost always prohibitive favorites.  They won, but with all the juice I was laying, especially later in the season, it was almost impossible to make a substantial profit. 

My epiphany came during the 2018 season when I competed in an MLB contest.  The winner was determined by which contestant produced the highest profit, not the best record.  My record was good, but I didn’t win or finish anywhere near the money.  What I noticed was that while my W-L record was better that some of the contestants who finished ahead of me, my profit margin was much worse.  I won more games, but the heavy juice that I was laying made it almost impossible to make a big profit.  I needed to adapt and find a way to increase my profit margin without having to bet on bad, low win probability teams. 

That’s when I happened upon the stat about how often big favorites win, and that’s when I started experimenting with two-team ML parlays.  They were a lot cheaper and damn, it worked.  Since 2019, I’ve made a profit every season and I won at least 100 units in five of those six seasons, sometimes much more like last season.  2023 was the lone exception.  I only won slightly more than 36 units, but I still made a profit. The odds on the parlays were just so much better than individual ML bets.  In many cases I actually got plus money, which meant that while my W-L record might not be as impressive, my profit margin was much better.

The third thing that you should know is that I also likebetting 1^st fives.  First of all, it simplifies the handicap by removing bullpens from the equation  You can’t always trust managers to make the right bullpen moves at the right time.   If I see what I think is a big starting pitcher mismatch, I can just bet on that and not worry about the rest.      

Of course, good handicapping still requires putting in time.  That’s just the way it is and there’s no getting around that, but with my approach, I can bet on good teams and/or good starting pitchers at reasonable prices.  Since 2019, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing, and it’s worked out pretty well.

I don’t know if I’ll have a play on either of those two Tokyo games yet. The Dodgers are currently -165 while the Cubs are +150, and 1^st 5 numbers aren’t available yet.  All I can say right now is best wishes to all.  Stay healthy and let’s make 2025 a great season!

BOL!