So, it’s the summer and you want to start getting into baseball betting. Well, you’ve come to the right place. Before you place any wagers and swing for the fences, it’s important to know how to bet on baseball and make MLB picks!
Betting on any sport can be a bit overwhelming at the start while learning about how things work. Baseball is no different, as there’s plenty to unpack when it comes to betting on America’s past time.
It’s become one of the most popular forms of betting in the United States, partially because it has the ability to be profitable. It also helps that during the summer months, baseball doesn’t have to share the spotlight with other sports on a daily basis but with the arrival of in play MLB betting, it really has proven to be a sport worth betting on.
Yes, it is legal to bet on MLB online. There have been many legislative developments on the sports betting front over the past few years which has led to laws passing in nearly 20 states allowing sports wagering. So you may be asking, “where can I bet on MLB games legally?”
Luckily, betting on baseball legally online has never been easier in places like New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Indiana, and West Virginia where mobile sports betting is in full swing. In over a year from the Supreme Court opening up the industry to states other than Nevada online betting popularity has surpassed all expectations.
Using one of the many reliable MLB online betting sites allows you to place wagers from any location so long as you’re in a state where sports wagering is legal. Not everyone is adopting the mobile dynamic of sports betting, but plenty of states including Tennessee and Montana are expected to launch legal sports betting online in the near future as well.
If you aren’t in a state with legal online sports betting, you can place legal sports picks at FendOff Sports. Read our FendOff Sports review for more information and get our exclusive welcome bonus below:
Each of these sports betting sites made the list for several different reasons:
If you’re of the many people getting involved in MLB betting online, you’ll surely need to know how to go about picking the best online betting sites. You should feel like the platform you’re using is entirely legitimate and safe to use while offering you some great amenities that give you an opportunity to win.
Below we’ll detail some of the factors that go into finding sportsbooks for online gambling on the MLB if you’re in a state that legally allows it.
See if you can speak to others, preferably bettors you know, who have used the same platform you are considering. Even if they’ve never used it, find out why. Which legal site have they chosen and why? Getting information straight from other bettors is an unfiltered look always worth getting.
Sites like BonusSeeker spend hours researching and writing about the legal sports betting industry. We are on top of welcome bonuses, promotional offers and the gambling markets offered by each site and use the applications to make MLB picks on all season long.
Read our reviews on each sports betting site that detail promotions, odds, and the markets offered.
Terms and conditions can be confusing and finding out exactly how some things work can be difficult if you don’t have anyone to ask. Any of the best online sportsbooks will offer email and chat support. Don’t be shy to note what questions you may have about the platform and what they offer, and fire away before you sign up.
Reading odds is the first step to sports betting. It could appear complicated at first but isn’t something to be intimidated by since it’s quite easy to grasp once things are laid out clearly. Here are some important things to remember:
After reading odds, being aware of the different available bet types is crucial to success. Some bets offer opportunities for a big payday while others are more conservative wagers with a higher chance of winning.
There are many MLB betting options that provide seemingly endless opportunities to pad the bankroll, but there varying types of bets that players must know to be successful. Before you can get into any baseball betting strategy, first you need to know how to go about making MLB picks at the sportsbook. In this guide, we will review wager types commonly made in baseball including:
These betting types take into account World Series betting at online sportsbooks. Once you’re all set to play at your sportsbook, it’s time to get familiar with how to bet on baseball. Since BonusSeeker.com is your best online source for information, odds and strategy for making MLB picks, we’ve got you covered.
Moneyline betting in baseball is one of the most common ways to wager due to its simplicity. It requires picking the winner of the baseball game and nothing more. Not all baseball teams are created equal, and these MLB betting lines are the oddsmakers’ way of evening things out for games to be wagered on. The most significant part about moneyline bets is that the baseball team you bet on only has to win the game, but the troubling part is that you might have some issues risking substantial amounts of money on the big favorites.
The following example will help guide us through several types of betting options, beginning with moneylines:With moneylines, favorites get a negative line and underdogs get a positive line. Moneyline odds should be looked at relative to the number 100. In this scenario, the Rays are a very heavy favorite over the Orioles with a line about as high as you’ll see in baseball. To select the Rays at -270, you would have to wager $270 to win $100. If you like the underdog hoping to pull an upset, however, you would get much more profitable odds. A $100 bet on Baltimore at +230 would mean a $230 payout.
If you were willing to wager the same $270 and put it on the Orioles at +230 instead of the Rays, the winnings can really pile up. That would pay out $621, which is far greater value than you get with the favorite, but a much larger risk as well.
Making MLB predictions on the run line isn’t much different than the moneyline in the sense that you’re selecting a winner of the game. The difference is a -1.5 spread added on the favorite and a +1.5 spread added to the underdog. By forcing one team to win by multiple runs, you can earn a bigger payout, whereas selecting the underdog with a run of cushion worsens odds.
EXAMPLE: Tampa Bay Rays -1.5 (-142) vs. Baltimore Orioles +1.5 (+120)
Betting the Rays in this situation at -1.5 means wagering $142 to win $100, which is a much better payout than betting the -270 money line. On the flip side, betting the Orioles at +1.5 means risking $100 to win $120 as long as they lose by less than two runs (as opposed to winning $230 on the ML). The extra run is great to have as an insurance policy but removes much of the underdog value on MLB predictions.
Totals are another simple and popular way to make MLB picks. Oddsmakers assign a total to each game, and betting on it means selecting whether the combined score of the two teams will exceed that number for not. Odds tend to be even on both sides of the total, with occasional variance based on which side is more popular among the betting public.
EXAMPLE: Tampa Bay Rays/Baltimore Orioles Total Over 9 (-108) or Under 9 (-114). In this example, the over is a $108 wager to win $100, while the under is a $114 risk for $100. In the event this game ends with exactly nine runs, this is a push, which will trigger a refund of the original wager to the player.
At many sportsbooks, bettors also have the option of making MLB picks for only the beginning portion of the game, which covers the first five innings (F5). These types of bets requires you to choose which team will have the lead at the end of the 5th inning. Occasionally, a three-way moneyline featuring both teams and ‘draw’ as options (similar to soccer) will be available for an F5 bet as well.
These bets are offered in moneyline and run line form generally, and totals are offered for half of the game the same way they are for the full game. The benefit of betting a five-inning bet is that relief pitchers are mostly taken out of the equation and it serves as an alternative for MLB picks when players are high or low on a given starting pitcher. The forecasting of a pitcher’s duel can call for an under bet, and players make look to take the first five innings when dealing with teams that struggle with relief pitching. Struggling starting pitchers could call for an over wager just the same.
Alternate lines are another type of wager popular among some bettors for making MLB picks. Bookmakers will offer modified MLB lines in addition to the -1.5 or +1.5 run line spread and will adjust the odds according to the line. Here’s an example featuring a game between the Rays and Orioles:
Alternate lines give players a chance to add extra runs to the spread on either side of the game. Rather than taking the Rays on the moneyline or even -1.5, players can garner a better payout by choosing an alternate spread that forces the spread to increase for the favorite.
For the largest payouts possible, players can take the underdog and turn them into a favorite by having them give away runs in the spread. In the above case, the underdog Orioles (+230 moneyline) call for a huge payout after making them -2.5 favorites (+560).
Futures bets are a wager on an event that will not be decided until some point in the later on (re: division, league, championship, awards, etc), as they essentially offer a pick on a specific player/team long before the outcome is decided. These types of bets tend to have very profitable odds, even among the favorites.
Below are some common baseball futures bets:
Based on what the market is, payouts can increase. Picking a World Series winner, for example, would pay out much more than just a division winner or even the league champion. As the season goes on, the MLB betting lines are constantly updated by oddsmakers and some teams inevitably rise above others and develop longer or shorter odds. Categories like over/unders for a given team’s wins for the season or league MVP are popular markets available prior to the beginning of most professional sports seasons.
With the advent and exponential growth of online sports betting, prop bets have become incredibly popular. It used to be that we’d only hear about props being available for large events like the Super Bowl (which they still are ), but they have since become much more mainstream for the everyday sports schedule. Prop bets are essentially yes/no wagers on very specific outcomes that, for the most part, do not directly tie into the result of the game. In baseball, there are plenty of examples, including things we’ve covered like alternate run lines.
Here’s a more detailed list of what falls under prop bets when making MLB picks:
Players love to bet parlays as much as nearly any other type of bet due to the fact that they give you the chance to wind up with a big payday. It is a risky wager to make, and oftentimes a difficult one to win. Parlays link together two or more sides (moneylines, point spreads and over/unders included) into one bet in order to create more favorable odds for the player. The catch is that in order to hit a parlay, each one of the sides needs to win in order for the bet to win. If one side of your parlay loses, the entire wager is a loss.
Payouts for parlays tend to vary a little from between sportsbooks, but are paid out on the following scale from FanDuel Sportsbook.
As you can see, the odds and payouts get bigger the more teams that the sports bettor selects for their parlay. It’s important to remember, however, that these figures are based on all sides of a wager being offered at “standard” -110 odds. Exact payout odds are sure to alter depending on who players select to include in their sports betting parlay. Including underdogs in your parlay will garner a larger payout, while adding favorites will cause potential winnings to lessen. The below example is a parlay featuring the following sides:
Two of these sides are right around the -110 mark, but one is a decent-sized favorite (Red Sox), so the total value of a standard three-team parlay drops from +596 to +504. Although the highest possible payout is always the goal, taking a hit on overall winnings to give yourself a better shot at victory is advised. Especially when your payout is still several times your original investment.
Round robin bets are an easy way of doing a large number of parlays at one time. In a round robin, you will select between three and eight sides (ML, spread or total) to have in one larger bet. You can then choose to place smaller MLB parlays to cover every combination of your original bet, if you so choose.
EXAMPLE: You want to bet on the following sides in a three-leg parlay:
If you choose to divide your three-team parlay into two-team round-robin bets, there are three different combinations that can be made. With a four-team parlay, there are six different two-way bets that can be made and four combinations of three-way bets. The more teams in the original parlay, the more round robin MLB parlays can be created.
Below is a chart detailing the combination possibilities based on how many teams start in the original parlay, and how many teams you may want in each smaller bet.
Number Of Sides/Teams In Original Parlay | Size Of Round Robin Parlays (Number Of Sides) | Total Number Of Possible Bets |
---|---|---|
3 | 2 | 3 |
4 | 2 | 6 |
4 | 3 | 4 |
5 | 2 | 10 |
5 | 3 | 10 |
5 | 4 | 5 |
6 | 2 | 15 |
6 | 3 | 20 |
6 | 4 | 5 |
6 | 5 | 6 |
7 | 2 | 21 |
7 | 3 | 35 |
7 | 4 | 35 |
7 | 5 | 21 |
7 | 6 | 7 |
8 | 2 | 28 |
8 | 3 | 56 |
8 | 4 | 70 |
8 | 5 | 56 |
8 | 6 | 28 |