Last year I reviewed Michael Murray's Betting Baseball 2006. This year's edition contains some significant updates over last year, enough so that the new guide is worth reviewing by comparison.
The first noticeable change is the book's binding. In previous years, Betting Baseball was spiral bound in an 8 1/2" by 11" format. This year the book is professionally bound in a trade paperback format. Even though I'd greatly prefer to have a pile of loose-leaf papers with excellent information than to have the most attractive book that doesn't have anything worthwhile to say, it's still worth noting that the packaging of the book is a significant step up.
Added to the new volume is a chronological narrative where the author aligns many of the topics in the book with bets he placed during the 2006 season. Overall, I'm not a big fan of this change. Doing so moved several topics around, and I think some of the flow of the book suffers as a result. This would all be a beneficial trade-off if the narrative portions contributed to the reader's ability to make winning bets, but although Murray lists some wagers he makes in these passages as well as his results, he provides hardly any information on what factors drove him to make these bets. I'd like this narrative if it provided insight on how to apply the methods in this book to specific situations, but it appears to be superfluous to me.
Another improvement in the 2007 edition, though, is the editing. My biggest objection to the 2006 edition was that because of the large number of errors, it was hard to trust much of the rest of the information it contained. Murray has gone to great lengths to make corrections, and Betting Baseball 2007 is greatly improved as a consequence. Kudos to the author for doing the hard work to make sure his book is useful to its audience.
Most of the information is an updated version of what appeared in earlier editions. However, some subtractions seem to have occurred. Most notably, I can't find the day/night totals splits that were in last year's edition, which seems odd to me as that's valuable information for totals bettors. Also, Murray's new information on money management, particularly with regard to Kelly betting, is, unfortunately, problematic in a way consistent with most of the sports betting literature, which is to say, misinformed. On the other hand Murray has added some information on bets on the results of the first five innings of games. Unfortunately, with the withdrawal of Pinnacle from the US sports betting market, this has less utility than Murray probably hoped when the section was originally written.
Murray's 2006 book was a useful reference for those who are serious about betting baseball. Many of the flaws in that addition have been addressed for 2007, making Betting Baseball 2007 even more valuable. In my opinion there's still room for improvement, though. I believe Murray could do a better job tying all of his data together into a coherent methodology for bettors, for example. Still, this is a good book that has gotten better, and I believe that most baseball bettors would be well advised to take a close look at it.
Betting Baseball 2007 is a significant upgrade over the 2006 edition. While the binding and packaging has been significantly improved, even more important is the editing and fact checking, which gives me more confidence in the data contained in this edition than in years past. There are still areas in which I think the book could be improved, and some useful information from last year's edition seems to be missing in '07. However, previous editions have been useful, and the 2007 update is better, so Betting Baseball 2007 is resource that I expect most baseball bettors will find to be valuable.
Note: I received a free review copy of this book from the publisher. I have no other interest, financial or otherwise, in the success of this book.
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