How to Bet on Baseball

There are many ways to bet on baseball, both for individual games and overall season results, as well as individual players’ performances. Understanding how baseball betting works is essential to bettor's success but most be combined with an effective wagering strategy to produce consistent results.

Money lines transcend many bets, are based on positive and negative figures and indicate how much money a better must wager to win A$100 or how much a A$100 bet would win. Negative numbers indicate how much you must bet to win A$100. For example, if one team has a money line of -1200, it means you must bet A$1200 to win A$100. If that team has a money line of +180, you would win A$180 with a bet of A$100.

Bettors can also wager on over/under run totals, which is the amount of runs the two teams score combined in a game. This is typically close to an even-money bet. Bettors should look at each team’s offense and who is pitching in the game when assessing how to wager.

Top Baseball Leagues to Bet On

• Major League Baseball (United States/Canada) | Bettors can wager both on Major League Baseball, the highest level of the sport in the United States and Canada, and minor-league baseball, which features mostly younger players trying to get to the major leagues.
• Nippon Professional Baseball (Japan) | The highest level of baseball in Japan, the NPB is divided into two six-team leagues, the Central League and the Pacific League. The best team from each league meet at the end of the season in the Nippon Series, also called the Japan Series, to determine a champion.
• Mexican Baseball League | The LMB is part of Major League Baseball’s minor-league baseball circuit but none of the teams are affiliated with the MLB.
• Australian Baseball League | The ABL is the premier baseball league in Australia. Founded in 1989, it is jointly owned by Major League Baseball and the Australian Baseball Federation.
• Korean Baseball Organization (South Korea) | The KBO League consists of 10 teams and is the most popular sports league in South Korea. The regular season culminates in the Korean Baseball Series.

Other countries with professional baseball leagues include Taiwan, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Colombia, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden.

Most Bet On Baseball Events

• World Series | At the end of Major League Baseball’s playoffs, the winners of each league meet in the best-of-7 World Series, otherwise known as the Fall Classic. Many bettors wager before and during the season as to which team they think will make and/or win the championship, but the betting options are amplified during the Series.
• World Baseball Classic | Held every four years. Sixteen teams participate in what has become an important tournament for many countries. The first two rounds are round-robin to get to the final four semifinalists.
• Olympics | Baseball became an official Olympic sport in 1992 but was voted out of the games after the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Baseball has been reinstated and will be part of the Olympics moving forward.

Top Baseball Markets To Consider

Sportsbooks typically offer a host of choices for bettors. Often they are separated into game odds and outrights. Betting on individual game results or the over/under for total runs are typical wagers. Sometimes bookies will allow for wagers on specific players’ performances during a game, including the number of hits, runs batted in, home runs, strikeouts and more. Here's a bit more on the top baseball betting stats.

Extremely popular are outrights, in which bettors can bet on teams to win their divisions, leagues or championships. Teams not expect to perform well often get big odds while favorites draw smaller odds.

Bettors can also wager on who they think will win awards at the end of the season. For instance, you can bet on who you think will have the most home runs in Major League Baseball or who will be the Most Valuable Player. During the playoffs, bettors can bet on who will win each series as well as individual games and more.