Good Luck and Bad Luck Pitchers

Good Luck and Bad Luck Pitchers

When it comes to sports, none of them can compare to baseball when it comes to sheer luck. A batter can hit the ball hard four times and end up 0-for-4, while the next game the same hitter could end up with a check-swing double and a bad-hop single.

In football, there may be the occasional tipped pass that is intercepted or goes for a touchdown, while a basketball player might get the occasional "shooter's touch" basket, but in most sports, the statistics are generally a good indicator of how well a particular player has played.

That isn't always the case in baseball, which is why the saying about everything evening out in the end is pretty much limited to the national pastime.

Nowhere is this more applicable to pitchers and their win-loss record. A quick look at some records of starting pitchers this morning (Friday, June 25, 2010) shows Zack Greinke and Justin Verlander as each having an ERA of 3.94, but Greinke has a dismal 2-8 record, while Verlander is 8-5.

Certainly, Greinke has deserved a better fate than his record shows, while Verlander is pretty much where you would expect him to be. On the other hand there are pitchers like Brian Bannister, Greinke's teammate with the Royals, who is 7-5, but has a miserable 5.29 ERA.

Naturally, a starting pitchers season win-loss record doesn't do anything for us as sports bettors, as we are simply concerned with the team that wins the game and not which pitcher happens to earn the win or the loss, but the concept of things evening out over the course of the season does have a bit of merit.

Simply, pitchers will win games they deserve to lose and lose games they deserve to win. From that perspective, pitchers who lose games they should win are probably "due" for a win, while pitchers who win a game they should have lost, are probably "due" for a loss.

Good Luck Pitchers

For the purpose of this article, we'll classify a good luck pitcher as one who earned a win while allowing five or more earned runs. By earning the win, we're looking for a case where the pitcher earned the decision, not just seeing their team get the victory.

Naturally, after such a poor winning effort, we'll look for the pitcher to pick up a loss in the near future.

Bad Luck Pitchers

Here, we'll classify as bad luck pitchers as one who gets tagged with a loss in a game in which they allow one earned run or less. Again, we're looking for those games where the pitcher gets the decision and doesn't just have his team lose the game.

In this case, we'd expect the pitcher to catch a break or two and have a winning effort in the future.

Betting Our Good Luck/Bad Luck Pitchers

The baseball adage of things evening out over the course of the season is important to remember. It's not that things will even out in the next game, so from that aspect, the best way to use this method is a three-game chase method, which means we will follow a qualifying pitcher for up to three starts.

If we have a pitcher who is due for a loss, meaning they earned a win in a game in which they allowed five or more earned runs, we will bet against that pitcher their next three starts or until we win a bet. If the pitcher's team losses the next game he takes the mound, we'll scratch him off of our bet against list.

We'll do the same for our bad luck pitchers, who will be on our bet for list. We'll either bet on them up to three times or until we cash a ticket.

It's important to note that for the purpose of our wagers, the pitcher doesn't have to earn a decision for us to end a betting series. Once a betting sequence beings, we're solely interested in winning or losing our bets.

Examples

We'll look at a few examples to show the method in action, starting with Greinke. On May 2, Greinke was pinned with the loss in a 1-0 defeat against Tampa Bay. Greinke was solid, allowing just four hits and one run over eight innings, but still took the loss.

For our purposes, Greinke was now on our bet list. His next start, Greinke was decent, but Kansas City dropped a 4-1 decision to Texas, meaning Greinke was still on our list of pitchers to bet. Kansas City won its next game with Greinke on the mound, at which point we have a win and end the sequence.

Just three games after pitching the Royals to victory, Greinke was again on the wrong end of a 1-0 contest in which he earned the loss. It wasn't until the third try, but the Royals did win with Greinke on the mound to give us a sequence win in what would have been our final wager on Greinke, win or lose, as we won't chase any longer than three games.

Our man Johnny Cueto has also gotten into the act and on June 12 was the winning pitcher in Cincinnati's 11-5 victory over Kansas City. Cueto was far from impressive, however, allowing five earned runs in six innings, which put him on our bet against list.

Cueto's next start was against Seattle and he was much better, but unfortunately for the Reds, Seattle's Cliff Lee was better and Seattle won 1-0. Since Cueto was the losing pitcher despite allowing just the one earned run, he was moved to our bet on list and didn't disappoint, throwing seven shutout innings his next start as the Reds defeated Oakland, but more importantly, giving us two wins in two wagers.

Betting Progression

The most common type of betting progression used for three-game sequence bets is a 1-2-4 progression, meaning you wager 1 unit on the first game and increase your bet to 2 units if the series goes to a second wager, and 4 units if you're wagering a third time.

The premise behind this is that a sequence win will guarantee a 1-unit profit. I would likely do the same, except use a smaller progression, such as .5 units-1 unit-2 units. While you won't win as much, you also won't lose as much and it's possible to have several sequences taking place the same day and it's never a good idea to have too much of your bankroll in play at any one time.

How you use the method, if it all, is entirely up to you. It's an idea that I wanted to throw out there for you to consider.