Joe Duffy (www.OffshoreInsiders.com)
The hottest statistic among baseball handicappers utilized in evaluating offenses is on base percentage plus slugging percentage (OPS). This is not a new statistic among sharpies, and in fact was overlooked for a few decades by baseball itself. I first heard about it in the mid-1970s when Steven Mann, a statistician for the Houston Astros, was touting said numerator on a radio sports talk show I was listening to. I employed and tested this statistic to capture a few Strat-o-Matic championships in my formative years. Who says youth is wasted on the young?
I’ve always put forth that the proper Triple Crown in baseball should be on base percentage, slugging average and runs produced. In that vain, the streamlined stat of OPS is finally being noticed by the masses.
In fact, the growingly more sophisticated gaming public is finally paying additional attention to offensive statistics. This is bad news for the books because Johnny Q. Public used to throw his money away simply betting little more than just starting pitcher’s ERA statistics with an extra emphasis on a hurler’s last three starts.
According to Cy McCormick of MasterLockLine.com, the online sports betting syndicate, the hot gauge now for pitchers is comparing his batting average against (OAV) overall against to his OAV with balls in play.
Many of the cutting edge handicappers they monitor take the two quoted stats and compare it to the league average to find disparities. “The thought is if a pitcher’s overall batting average against ranks much higher than his batting average against with balls in play, he is pitching better than his stats because the fielders behind him are not playing as well as they should be.”
Of course if a pitcher does better relative to the rest of the league with balls in play than he does overall, the supposition among the avant-garde gamblers is that the pitcher has benefited from good fortune. Hence rough days lay ahead for the hurler.
McCormick says the top services parse the information to their exact liking in their own private databases, but that Yahoo! Sports (sports.yahoo.com) does the best job of any free public site comparing and contrasting that day’s pitchers’ stats to both the league average and league leader.
If there is one consideration that has seen some depreciation in value recently, it’s the ground ball to fly ball ratio (GB:FB). Ground ball pitchers will always be more affective than fly ball pitchers, but the statistic is no longer the silver bullet data all but guaranteeing impending doom.
“First it was supposed to be juiced balls then we realized it was juiced players,” says Jerry Malcolm of CasinoBettingNews.com. “Regardless, a fly ball is not nearly as poisonous now that the power numbers are stabilizing.”
As in any sport, the elite gamblers look beyond mere numbers-crunchers. An uber-popular book and arguably the Bible for scrutinizing and exploiting baseball statistics is “Moneyball: the Art of Winning an Unfair Game” by Michael Lewis. Oh how true that title is for the gambler who masters the mathematical art.
Joe Duffy during his Cadillac Club scorephone days developed the reputation as the top baseball underdog handicapper in the business. His plays are now exclusive on OffshoreInsiders.com
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