More than any other popular American sport, baseball lends itself to mathematical and statistical analysis. Because of the nature of the game, each play can be more easily isolated and quantified than other popular sport, leading to its appeal among those who are analytically inclined. This sort of analysis can also be applied to wagering on baseball games. Michael Murray discusses baseball details as they apply to betting in Betting Baseball 2006.
Murray begins his book discussing the aspects of baseball betting. He covers dime and alternate lines and how they relate to expected and actual casino hold percentages, the run line, and totals. This is a pretty thorough discussion, although those who have never bet sports before might want to obtain the first phase of their education from a gentler source. Murray also rates several offshore sports books and advises prospective bettors on what to watch out for regarding questionable offshore operators. Overall, this seems like pretty reasonable advice to me.
Next Murray discusses aspects of baseball handicapping. He discusses ways to evaluate baseball offense, pitching, and defense. Using his methods, one can come up with a projected score for a game, and using his betting information one can project the edge over a book's line. Murray doesn't stop with the players, he also provides information on day/night adjustments, weather adjustments, park adjustments, and other factors that might affect game scores.
All of these factors are interesting and well considered, and doubtless a serious baseball bettor will find them to be valuable. However, I can't advise anyone to blindly apply these numbers to their baseball handicapping. The reason is that despite the wealth of interesting topics and statistics Murray provides, the book is not well edited. Consequently, where some of these numbers may be incorrect, they could easily lead a prospective bettor astray.
There are many grammar errors in the book that would have been caught by a professional copy editor. In the park adjustments section Murray doesn't bother to distinguish between different ball parks in which a team has played or adjustments made to a single park. For example, San Diego park adjustment figures for 2001-2005 are listed without qualification, even though the first three of those years the Padres played in an entirely different stadium than the last two. Moreover, Murray omits data on the Florida Marlins park adjustments altogether. The title page of the book contains the URLs for three web sites, two of which don't work, including the one that is supposed to contain updates and errata for the book. All of these factors, along with additional errors that I have not mentioned here, make me reluctant to rely on Murray's data for my own handicapping.
Despite shortcomings in the editorial department, the book contains many interesting ideas that can readily be adapted to baseball betting. Some of these I have found nowhere else, such as the author's ratings of baseball umpires. I don't know if I agree with them or not, but this section is certainly food for thought. I believe Betting Baseball 2006 is very valuable for its ideas and methodologies, but when it comes to using data, I'd recommend obtaining the raw data and calculating the relevant factors oneself, perhaps using the methods outlined in Adler's intriguing Baseball Hacks.
Compared to most books on sports betting, Murray is more rigorous and careful about his use of statistics than most. However, by doing so he clears a low bar. I'd still like to see more rigor behind the author's claims. I'd also like to see more of the raw data behind his calculations. This would go a long way to alleviating the concerns I have about the veracity of his data.
Overall, I believe Murray's Betting Baseball 2006 is a valuable resource for the baseball bettor, but I can't give it an unequivocal recommendation. Those interested in wagering on baseball almost certainly should check it out, but even though it could have been the definitive reference on baseball betting information, I believe that insufficient quality control prevents it from attaining that lofty status.
Betting Baseball 2006 contains a great deal of valuable information for the baseball bettor, and those interested in this topic will almost certainly find it worthwhile. For me, it fails to attain the status of a truly definitive work. Largely this is because the number of obvious errors in the book renders much of the important data it contains suspect. Nonetheless, there is certainly enough of value here to make it a worthwhile reference on the subject.
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