MLB – Baseball Betting Odds Online

There’s no question that baseball is America’s favorite pastime and it follows that online baseball betting is America’s favorite sportsbook activity. When it comes to betting baseball online, there’s a ton of action to choose from every day. Naturally, you need some forehand understanding of the baseball betting world in order to navigate these waters. The three methods to bet on baseball are the moneyline, total over/under, and run line.

BetNow is one of the top sports betting sites that allows MLB bettors to participate and legally bet on baseball betting from the regular season up to the postseason. MLB bettors can find the most up-to-date sports betting odds and various betting lines surrounding the tournament.

We also offer sports betting in NCAA college sports like college basketball and other sporting events such as major sports leagues (MLB, NFL, NBA, NHL.)

Below you’ll find a comprehensive guide and information covering the ins and outs of online baseball betting that can help you understand major league baseball betting, betting value, and other things that are related to baseball betting trends.

The History of Baseball Betting 

Baseball betting has been going on essentially since there was baseball. Betting was one of the main ways that the sport was always viewed by the general public. Of course, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, betting was very different than it was today. Yes, there were bookies, and people that you had to get the bet through. 

As it was prohibited legally, you couldn’t exactly appeal to any sort of law if you were taken advantage of or lied to. As the sport evolved and Vegas rose to prominence, there were legal sportsbooks that people could avail themselves of, legal bookies, and so forth. 

Today, baseball betting is better than it’s ever been. Instead of having to go to Vegas, Atlantic City, or even your local casino, you’ll be able to bet on the games you want to bet on from anywhere, just as close as your phone or computer. 

Types of Baseball Bets 

There are more ways to bet on baseball than ever before. We’ll go into further depth about all of these below, but with our site, you’ll be able to bet on the money line, the point spread, and the odds in just about every game. With many games, you’ll also be able to bet alternatives of those as well, should you so choose. 

Additionally, you can bet “futures,” which are basically betting on what will happen through the course of the season, in the playoffs, and so forth. Prop bets are sometimes available, where you can bet on what a player or team is going to do. 

The Legalities of Baseball Betting 

Baseball betting is legal in more places than ever before. But, that doesn’t mean that it’s legal everywhere. Before you bet on the games that you want to bet on, you want to make sure that it’s legal to do so. We always recommend checking out the legality of what the rules are before you engage in betting.

The Season of MLB Games

The Major League Baseball season program consists of 162 games for each of the 30 teams: 15 in the American League (AL) and 15 in the National League (NL) —with 29 in the USA and 1 in Canada. A total of 2,430 games played over roughly six months, plus the postseason.

The MLB betting season begins in spring sometime in March and will continue until the fall, concluding in late September or early October. Afterwards the postseason will begin, leading up to the World Series. The World Series is the final series of the season and will determine who the best team in the world is. Afterwards the offseason will commence and the whole thing will start all over again in a couple of months.

Bet on MLB Championship Series

The World Series is the annual championship series for the MLB. This showdown has been going on since 1903 so there’s quite a bit of history to the sport. In of itself, the series is a best-of-seven playoffs to determine who gets to hoist the Commissioner’s Trophy. Colloquially referred to as the Fall Classic, even those who aren’t MLB fans tend to keep up with the World Series. It’s a great event for friends to get together and a terrific reason to make some online baseball predictions.

Wagering on Major League Baseball Games

In February, pitchers (starting pitchers and relievers) as well as catchers report to Spring Training, for what is the beginning of the baseball season. These are exhibition baseball games that every team plays, each on their own playing field. There’s a “Grapefruit League” in Florida and a “Cactus League” in Arizona. As you might imagine, while most sportsbooks may not have these games, we aren’t like them. You can find all of these betting options right here at our site.

Every team goes through this before the regular season, so you’ll be able to bet on all of the teams, not just the popular teams. The Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees, and every other team will be represented with live odds, just as in the regular season.

Then, in April, the regular season begins. Now you’ll be able to bet on baseball how you want. That could mean player props, it could mean taking the home teams, and so much else. If you believe one team has a true home field advantage (and many do) then one of the best bets might be on the home teams.

Generally speaking, the most common MLB betting lines consist of betting on the money line, betting against the spread, and betting on the over/under. We’ll be taking a look at these one-by-one below but first it’s important to familiarize yourself with the betting lines and MLB odds. The line begins on the left with the name of the team followed by the spread line, the totals line and the money line. Both the spread and the totals have two numbers, the number the represents the line and the odds that represent the payout. The last line, the money line, only features the odds.

Money Line

When you bet on the money line, you are simply betting on one team to beat another. In moneyline bets, you have a choice to place baseball bets on the favorites which is the team expected to win, or bet on baseball underdogs. Just keep in mind that if you’re betting on the side of the favorites, you will earn less money than you wagered if your bet wins, whereas winning an underdog bet will return more than your bet.

Using the example above, we can see that the Pirates are pegged as a betting underdog against the Cubs. We can tell this because the Pirates have a (+) in front of their odds while the Cubs have a (-).

Generally the odds on the money line start at -110 and will continue to rise if a team is heavily favored. Above we can see Chicago is pegged as a -158 favorite, which means they’re pretty likely to win this game. Normally a -110 betting line requires a $110 initial wager in order to be able to win $100. But sticking with the example above, you need to wager $158 in order to be able to win $100. In short, a $158 winning bet on Chicago would net you $258 in total (the original $158 wager plus the $100 in winnings).

Because the Pirates are the underdog and are likely to lose, taking them straight up is more appealing. Since they’re facing + odds, you only need to wager $100 in order to be able to win $148. Sportsbooks have to make taking the underdog appealing in order to balance these matchups up. To sum it up, a $100 winning bet on the Pirates would net you $248 (the original $100 wager plus the $148 in winnings).

Calculating Odds for Baseball Bets

The odds that we use at our site are created by professional handicappers. These handicappers are experienced. They are the experts of the experts, people who have been doing this for a very long time. The odds that our handicappers use, in fact, aren’t just for our site. You’ve seen them in many other places, on other betting sites as well.

The handicappers take so many factors into account when they make these odds. It’s not something that’s done quickly, on a whim, and so forth. Moreover, the odds on our site (as well as many others) adjust as circumstances change. A player is injured, someone is called up, and so forth – the calculated odds will shift when something happens. As with many of our other baseball bets, if there’s a game you’d like to bet on and you aren’t too sure about the odds, we may offer “alternative odds” for that particular game.

ATS

ATS Betting against the spread is a little more complicated than betting straight up but it’s still fairly straightforward. Instead of betting on one team to beat another, here you are betting on a team to cover the spread. So how does a team cover the spread?

The spread refers to a point total that a team must cover. Using the above listed odds, we can see that the runline is set at 1 ½ points. So in order for the favorite to cover the spread, Chicago in this case, the Cubs must beat the Pirates by more than 1 ½ points. On the other hand, if the Pirates can avoid losing by less than 1 ½ points, they will have covered the spread. Below are some listed examples so you can see how this runline would play out.

Cubs win 10-8 || Here Chicago won by 2-points so they did cover the 1 ½ point spread while the Pirates did not.

Cubs win 10-9 || Here Chicago won by 1-point so they did not cover the 1 ½ point spread while the Pirates did.

Pittsburgh wins 5-4 || Here Pittsburgh avoided losing altogether so they did cover the spread.

TOTALs

Unlike betting run line or money line, here you aren’t really picking one team over another. Instead, you are simply betting on the baseball totals or total sum of points that will be scored in a game. Obviously this is calculated by taking the points one team scored and adding it to the points the other team scored. Sticking with the betting line we’ve covered, we can see that the over/under is set at 9 ½ points. So if you think more than 9 ½ points will be scored in this matchup, you would take the over. If you think there will be less than that figure, you would take the under. The over is always the top line and the under is always the bottom line. The vig is the same in the example above but sometimes they can vary.

Parlays and props betting lines represent other MLB betting lines that aren’t as common. In baseball parlays you can make predictions in advance or even up the stakes by making multiples bets in one. Below we’ll be taking a look at these options as well as what they offer.

Parlays

Betting Parlays are very popular because they take a relatively low-risk wager and turn it into a massive payout. Parlays work by allowing you to combine multiple bets into one. Naturally, you need all of your bets to come true in order for your parlay to be successful. Since this is quite difficult to accomplish, bookies really sweeten the pot with these types of predictions. The payout is affected by how unlikely a bet is to come to fruition as well as how many different bets you’re making at once.

Props Betting

Props betting lines have been growing in popularity in recent years. Proposition bets or simply prop bets are a type of bet that can be related to any stats within a game that doesn’t need to have a direct correlation to the final results or outcome. It includes something like player performances, exact scores, team win totals, and others for entertainment purposes. With prop bets, sports bettors are betting on some vastly different things.

These types of lines can offer action on who will have a lead at halftime, what kind of game players will have and everything in between. There are a ton of different options so you really have to check these out yourself to be up to speed.

Live Betting

Live betting allows allows baseball bettors to bet on a game as it unfolds, making both the game and your bets that much more thrilling. This is somewhat new to the scene but it offers the biggest thrills of all. Additionally, there are a ton of opportunities to find some winnings as you watch the game develop.

Futures betting is a great option with tremendous odds. If you feel confident about who will be winning the World Series, this is without a doubt the best way to go about betting on baseball. Here you can make lofty predictions way in advance and capitalize on some pretty eye-catching odds. Below we’ll be taking a look at the World Series futures betting odds as they currently stand.

Baseball wagering isn’t like putting a bet down on a football or basketball game. To bet baseball or MLB games is to engage in a different kind of sports betting. Sure, you can get down a moneyline bet, with moneyline odds, just as you might with other sports. You can bet on a baseball game in terms of the final score, moneyline bets, or anything else related to MLB games. Bet on baseball and so much more right here at our site.

Baseball Betting Resources 

If you’ve spent any time online reading about baseball betting, then you’ve probably come across any number of “baseball betting resources,” each of which are going to teach you everything you need to know to bet on the games, and so forth. If those entertain you, if you believe that you get something out of them, then there’s no harm in reading those guides. 

However, the best betting resource for baseball is simply to watch the game, to know the game. The more baseball you see, the more you encounter it, the more you bet, the better you’ll get. Betting on baseball is like so many other endeavors in life – you can’t do it just through theory, through research. 

That having been said, research and knowledge are critically important. The best resources for learning about baseball are Major League Baseball’s home site, the respective team sites, and more. When many do their baseball betting, it’s based on patterns. A player has been in a hitting slump for a while, the slump may continue. Or, alternatively, he could be “due.” 

The phrase “regression to the mean” is one that so many first encountered through baseball. Teams that start off very hot (that were not expected to be contenders) do tend to “come back to Earth,” so to speak, as they “regress to the mean,” or become what they were thought to be. The more research you can do into baseball, the patterns, paths, and histories of the players and teams (particularly recently), the better off you may be when it comes to betting. 

Baseball Betting Systems 

Baseball is, in many ways, a game of failure. As the old saying (more or less) goes, “if a hitter fails two out of three times at the plate throughout his entire career, he’s an almost rock-solid hall of famer.” It’s true. The best hitters don’t hit all that often. Even the best pitchers give up runs. Baseball is a game where even the best teams of all time in the regular season are guaranteed to lose somewhere around forty games at the minimum. 

All of this is to say that there really are no such things as “baseball betting systems,” not in terms of something that you could rely on time in and time out. You can “ride the hot hand,” so to speak, in terms of one team or another. But there’s no real “system” that you can trust all of the time. As with so much else in betting, you’re going to have to go with your research and, ultimately, your intuition. 

Money Management for Baseball Betting 

The best, and most important money management advice for baseball betting is the same for all kinds of betting: never bet what you can’t afford to lose. Eventually, the best teams lose, dynasties fall, and so forth. Even the best bettors, the ones who have been betting on baseball professionally for many years, will tell you that they lose plenty, too. So, always be sure to bet in such a way that you are able to be OK should an unexpected loss happen. 

Another important money management tip: go with a betting site that gives you some kind of “free start,” “free bet,” etc. You want something where you’ll be able to get started with a bet that can launch your baseball betting on that site the right way. 

Commonly Asked Questions about Baseball Betting 

When it comes to baseball betting, we know that many of you have questions. We’ve taken some of the most commonly asked questions we’ve received and put them here. If you have other questions about betting on baseball, don’t be afraid to reach out. 

When Betting on Baseball, What’s the Objective? 

To have fun, of course. You also want to win. Perhaps ironically, that’s the same objective for those playing baseball, too. To break it down even simpler, you’re trying to predict what’s going to happen. You’re betting money that you’re going to be able to predict what’s going to happen in a game, in the first half of a game, with a player, and so forth. 

Is There a “House Edge” When it Comes to Betting on Baseball? 

You bet. The house always gets the opposite of what you bet. To put it in stark terms, you can calculate the house edge by looking at the total amount of money returned to the bettors and subtracting the total amount of money wagered from that. The house edge is the different. For the most part, five percent is the actual “house edge.” 

Is Betting on Baseball Different Than Betting on Other Sports? 

Absolutely. Why? Because you get so many  more opportunities. You can bet the NFL every week, but at most a team will play 20 games. You can bet on every single NFL game throughout the season, and you’re still going to come up far short of what baseball offers. There are 162 games in the baseball regular season alone. That’s lots of opportunities to bet. 

What are Baseball Betting Odds? 

Really, it comes down to your bet, what kind you’re making. Odds on our site usually come from the money line. You’ll see this as a ratio, -120, +200, etc. If you see a “-”, that team is the favorite. 

When it Comes Down to It, What are Baseball Betting Benefits? 

Having fun and winning money – that’s what betting on baseball is all about. The more you know about baseball, the better an opportunity you’ll have to make some real money. Now, many folks may not have followed the game since the days of Abner Doubleday, but they want to enjoy the games. Plenty bet to have a rooting interest, to find the games even more excited. 

Some bet on the team they’ve rooted for their whole lives, as a way of showing allegiance and being even happier when they win. 

Are There Risks With Betting on Baseball? 

Definitely. You can lose. This is, after all, gambling. And, as the old cliche goes, “it’s called ‘gambling,’ it’s not called ‘winning.” Always, always, only bet what you can afford to lose. That’s the only way to bet with baseball. 

When Thinking About Betting on Baseball, What Should I Consider? 

There’s any number of stats you can look at. Everyone has their take on what’s most important, what isn’t. You should have seen enough of the game to have an opinion about what matters most. That said, starting pitching is always something to keep in mind. Teams can’t get enough of it. Every team has plenty of starting pitchers but few teams have real aces.

Of course, you have to look at hitters, too. Head to head records, streaks, and so forth. We encourage you to learn as you go. That way, you can find what matters most to you. 

How Can I Give Myself the Best Chance to Win When Betting on Baseball? 

If we go with the idea that “betting” is really “making a prediction,” think about other predictions you’ve made in other areas of your life. When you predicted something would happen, did you have a lot of knowledge ahead of time? Did you guess? If you’re like most people, you’re more likely to make a great prediction with the more you know. 

So, learn all you can about baseball. Before putting a bet down, really dig deep on the players, the teams, and so forth. The more information you have in front of you, the better a decision you’ll be able to make. 

What are Some of the Most Common Baseball Betting Mistakes? 

“Just guessing” is a big one. Not doing much research can put you behind. “Betting more than you can afford to lose” is the worst thing you can do, of course. “Betting on streaks to last forever” is a mistake we see a lot. “Just going by one stat” is something else that happens more frequently than you might think. “So and So Pitcher has never lost in May – he’s going to go undefeated then this year, too” – that kind of thing. 

Perhaps the most common is not really learning the game before getting into the betting. 

Baseball Betting Tips

First, remember: this is supposed to be fun. If it ever feels like it’s not fun, stop doing it. That may sound simple, but it’s true. Remember, some of the most satisfied baseball bettors aren’t the ones always trying to bet on a “winner,” exactly. Instead, they’re trying to bet on their home team, the one they’ve grown up with and rooted for their entire lives.That can add a real sense of fulfillment to all of this. Beyond that, research is always your friend. The more you know, the better a decision you’ll be able to make. 

Another important tip that not all that many baseball bettors avail themselves of: remember, there are more bets than just the point spread, the money line, and so forth. Take advantage of the “first five innings,” of the futures, and so forth. Those are great, often overlooked ways to make real money in baseball betting. 

Baseball Betting Psychology 

When it comes to betting on sports in North America, there is more baseball betting than any other sports. It’s the most popular form of sports betting in the United States, bar none. That may sound surprising to some of you, but remember: there are more baseball games than any other kind of sporting event. Each team plays at least 162 games. That’s a lot of opportunities to win. 

Baseball betting is a fun, fantastic way to make money. But, like all betting, there are real risks to it as well as rewards. The greatest players of all time go into slumps. When they do, they often do something to “change things up.” Today’s baseball players have more data at their fingertips to help them improve. That’s what you should incorporate in your baseball betting, too: all of that information, all of those ways to get better. 

Good luck to you in baseball betting!