A unique guide to MLB baseball from 1903 to current day.
North side Chicago Cubs fan so they'll be used most as example fodder both good and bad.
( under development proof of concept prototype. No ads. No trackers )
| url | https://baseball-handbook.com |
Cubs play KCA in Wrigley night game today (7/22). Checked the handicapping and saw Rich Hill on the mound for Royals with no IP this season. Checked career and it's really him ( unless there's an error in my playerids ).
Pitched for the Cubs during Lou Pinella's playoff years in 2007 and 2008 which they lost in first round both times.
Pitched not so good last season after only 3 2/3 IP and this will be his 20th year in the league.
The simulator is up and running now and seems to be working. Expected values for current day can be seen at:
https://baseball-handbook.com/index.php?ev=today
If you're thinking of betting baseball visiting this page can provide a perspective showing team strengths/weaknesses and why Vegas moneylines, the gold standard predicting win probability, are what they are. Right now It's just proof of concept testing the code base; no ads, trackers, or anything.
This thread will attempt to describe how the simulator works in this data model. A random game between TOR and PHI on 5/8/2024 was chosen. The Details view of this game can be seen here: https://baseball-handbook.com/index.php?game=202405080_TOR_PHI
TC integers ( als,alr,hls,hlr ) were 0,0,2,2. The simulator pulls data from a dataset of ~60K games divided into 13 buckets. Each bucket contains data for lineup/starter and lineup/relief pairs for home and away which the simulator draws from to determine Win%.
1/n
I ran across something interesting while randomly clicking through my site to ferret out bugs. Roger Maris and Ken Hunt are not only buried in the same cemetery, their plots are right next to each other.
There has to be a story behind this so I googled and discovered they were boyhood friends.
https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/ken-hunt/
Cemetery data came from retrosheet.org and I data based it accessible via the web.
https://baseball-handbook.com/index.php?cemetery&city=Fargo&state=ND
Maris died in 1985, Hunt in 1997.
Another miserable weather day in April for a Chicago Cubs home game against the Rangers. Temp 37F, windy and very wet with occasional snowflakes in the air.
I'll watch it on MLB Gameday 😃
https://baseball-handbook.com/index.php?game=202504070_TEX_CHN
Note: Early season stats are volatile.
After 193 100 unit bets betting > +110 under dogs during spring training the system was up a mere 390 units or ~2% net gain, much less than expected. Attached is the graph showing earnings cratered in the last 7 days / 40 bets. Interesting nonetheless and we'll see what happens next year.
The running preseason betting theory is if you know little to nothing about an event other than there are two outcomes then from your perspective the probability of each outcome is 50/50. If you flip a coin and know the force used to flip, distance, angle, etc. you can get predict a probability greater than 1/2.
Betting the underdog in preseason ( > +110 ) is up ~10% on 133 bets so far.
https://baseball-handbook.com/index.php?betfor
Attached graph is running total. This does not work in regular season.
Changed the Vegas Standings view to show average Vegas break even probability vs. Real Win Pct and then BetFor and BetAgainst numbers. Betting for Rockies returned ~65% net gain on 6 bets so far this pre-season, betting against them loses almost 60%. Bets aren't being taken on all games and lots of games are tied.
Full table at:
The other day checked Cubs preseason guys and saw Greg Workman with the most plate appearances. Today he's #2. Looked him up and he was #1 AA player in 2024 playing for the Detroit affiliate "Erie Seawolves" according to this data model. Tigers have a lot of good players bubbling up from AA.
https://baseball-handbook.com/index.php?minors=2024&leagueid=aa&teamid=DET
According to mlb.com Cubs got Workman from DET for cash in a Rule 5 draft last December.
https://www.mlb.com/player/gage-workman-669398?stats=career-r-hitting-minors&year=2025
Now that we're 1 week into Spring Training let's look at betting the underdog data ( > +110 ). It's up 36.4% which is way more than expected ( ~10% ). Data fluctuates in the short term. Past results don't affect future results. Had a bad day yesterday ( 2/27 ).
I made a web page to check the data and it looks OK. You can view it at:
https://baseball-handbook.com/index.php?betfor
This site does not endorse gambling. This is purely an academic exercise.
