Baseball's Turnaround Teams
At the beginning of a new baseball season, sports gamblers will try to determine which teams will be better than they were the previous season and which teams will be worse. Being able to pinpoint these teams can often lead to finding good value in early season wagers or on betting over or under the posted number of team wins.
Baseball is a bit different than the other sports, as a team can go from missing the playoffs to being a World Series contender with the addition of a couple of free agents, as is the case with the 2009 New York Yankees, who are the early favorites to win the Fall Classic on the basis of their pitching staff additions.
Naturally, off-season transactions have to be looked at when evaluating how a team will perform compared to the previous season. But there's another method of pinpointing teams that may climb in the standings or teams ripe for a fall. That is a team's record in one-run games.
One Run Games
A game that is decided by one run is in all probability a contest that could have gone either way. The team that comes away with a victory is typically one that catches the extra break and there's usually a bit of luck involved along the way.
Teams that win, or lose, an extra-ordinary number of one-run games are good candidates to see luck even up a bit the following season.
Since the 2004 season there have been 28 teams that won or lost 60-percent of their one-run games in a season. If we looked for a reversal of fortunes the following season, we'd find of the 13 teams that won an extra-ordinary number of one-run games that 11 of them finished with fewer wins than the previous season.
Of the 15 teams that lost a large number of one-run games, eight would post better records the following year, six would have worse records and one would have the same record. So the biggest edge is found by looking for teams that won a large number of one-run games to do worse the following year, but there is still merit in looking for those teams who lost to improve the following season.
There are four teams that bear watching in the 2009 season under this premise. The Tampa Rays were 29-18 in one-run games in 2008, so if things follow suit, the Rays will have trouble matching last year's 97-65 record.
On the other side of the equation, Seattle (18-30), Atlanta (11-30), and San Diego (16-28) would be logical choices to show improvement of their dismal 2008 records.
