One of the most important things a sports bettor can do over time is to evolve. You learn different strategies as the games change and dig deeper to find new ways to use the data available. Over the course of the last 5+ years while with VSiN, I’ve employed a generic system of tracking the results of teams that have bullpen ratings on my scale. It’s done consistently well, producing profits each season in that span. However, I’ve always felt it was something I could improve on by narrowing the scope of what should actually be wagered. With that in mind, as I handicapped baseball in the early weeks of this season, I felt an increasing discomfort with backing some teams I felt were overpriced despite their bullpen superiority. At the same time, I felt awkwardly overconfident at times when the team I felt had a better bullpen was an underdog. This gave me the urge to dig in and study situations like these closer. I’m glad I did, because after sharing these th oughts in my bullpen update article last Monday, the underdog angle took off like a rocket this past week, and the overpricing angle continued to thrive as well.
Overall, the general bullpen system was not good last week, going 44-45 for -9.43 units. These were the results by day:
Monday 5/1: 4-4, –0.46 units
Tuesday 5/2: 7-7, -3.55 units