To celebrate the start of the World Series Baseball Final between the Kansas City Royals and the New York Mets, we now look at the most popular forms of betting in the sport.
MONEY LINE BETTING
Probably the most popular baseball bet. With money line, the bettor is only concerned with who he or she thinks will win the game. There are no run totals, but the favourite and underdog are still determined in the sports book and indicated by two separate odds.If we take the example of the World Series Final, you may see odds such as these next to the two teams:
KC Royals +120
NY Mets -130
If someone was to bet €100 on the Royals and was successful, they would win €120. On the other hand, if the same person was to bet €100 on the Mets, it would cost them €130 to win €100 back.
RUN LINE
The run line in baseball betting is the equivalent to a point spread in other sports betting. The run line is always set at –1.5 or +1.5. Taking the current World Series Final as an example again, you will see betting in this particular section stated as below:
KC Royals + 1.5 (-130)
NY Mets –1.5 (+110)
In our example above, the Mets are 1.5 point favourites, whilst the Royals are the 1.5 underdog. The number signifies how much is to be added or subtracted from that teams’ run total at the conclusion of the game. So 1.5 would be taken off the Mets final score and 1.5 would be added to the Royals final total. The numbers in brackets signifies the odds the bettor will receive if their bet is successful. So if someone decided to bet on the Mets, they would have to win by a total of two runs for the bet to be paid out. If they were to bet on the Royals, they would have to win the game of lose by no less than one run.
TOTAL (ALSO KNOWN AS OVER/UNDER BET)
A person can bet on whether or not, the combined run total will be over or under what the sports books set it at before the game. Let’s once again take the example below:
KC Royals –1.5 O/U 9.5
NY Mets +1.5
Here, the bettor likes the pitching match-up in the game and believes that there will not be many runs scored. They place their bet on the under so as long as the combined scores registered by each team totals less than 10 the bet is successful.
Of course there are many other more detailed forms of betting on Baseballbut the examples we have looked at above, should help anyone who wants to get more involved to better understand the basics before parting with their hard earned money.
Steve Mitchell (@barafundler)