We have surveyed handicappers both professionals and beginners, asking them only one question, “Is it truth that the defense of a team is very important when you forecast football or baseball results?” According to the survey almost 100% of them answered, “Yes.”

Forecast Result in Baseball and Football Betting: Defense

But when the same handicappers were asked, “Is it truth that the defense of a team is very important when you forecast baseball results?” The most beginners said, “No”; and at the same time about a half of the professionals answered, “Yes.”
This survey, admittedly, was elementary, but it was made to confirm a problem, the existence of which has been suspected for many years.

The essence of this issue is that the most baseball handicappers pay their attention on the pitchers and batters, and almost ignore the defensive ability of a team. It may sound ironically, but the most handicappers agreed that the defense of a team influences on the match result, and besides this fact they still exclude the defense when they forecast the results of baseball matches.

We consider such a strange, dynamic ignoring of this aspect to be the result of the restricted estimation procedure. It means that it is more difficult to estimate the defense of a baseball team, than other main sport competitions (NBA and NFL).

Particularly, the amount of components in the baseball defense complicates this estimation.
The great number of factors includes: different field width of different stadium, different surface of the fields, understanding of the game situation, position, decision making and many other things.

But how does a handicapper evaluate the subtle factors such as: decision making and understanding? It is supposed not so easy to be done. This fact explains why the most handicappers generally ignore the defense.

Betting Factors That Help To Win

There are no problems with hitting and pitching when you evaluate both players and teams in whole. There are some factors, which allow to evaluate pitchers quite correctly: ERA, WHIP, Strikeouts SO, Bases on Balls /Walks/ – BB, Home Runs HR, etc. Such phenomena as: On-Base Percentage (OBP), Slugging Percentage (SLG), OPS (On-Base + Slugging), batting average (ВА или AVG), runs batted in (RBI) and others are very convenient for batters’ evaluating.

Though none of them is perfect, just some of the methods are better than others. But generally speaking all these statistical indices are more than just adequate comparison and opposition of the pitchers and the batters. And at last it is the very thing, which we as handicappers are looking for.