MLB Second Half Begins; What To Jump on Now

Happy Friday! We are halfway through July, which means Open Championship golf, the return of MLB for it’s second half and the smell of NFL Training Camp around the corner.

Betting with Bearman has you covered for the weekend with thoughts and picks on all those and more below. Reminder to download the Betting with Bearman podcast, which also has nightly updates on the Open Championship. Also follow us on Twitter/X for live betting action.

We have an MLB second half pick to bet and a very creative way to play tonight’s MLB action.

And of course, our Bear-Necessities one-on-one interview is back, this time with close friend and former colleague David Purdum from ESPN.

On to the analysis!

Baltimore Orioles (+104, Charlie Morton) at Tampa Bay Rays (-126, Taj Bradley)

If you subscribe to this newsletter, it's because you find some value in it over the millions of other sources where you could get your intel. Betting with Bearman takes great pride in offering insightful and unique content, with the goal to provide you with all the tools you need to make the best decision you can. Our job is to get "an edge" and believe that there is no one right way to do that. Every game is different and every segment of every game is different, so if you're not getting creative with your research, you're leaving expected value on the table.

Does that mean ingenuity always pays off? Of course not. Betting is hard and in this case, we are isolating a few innings over the course of a 162-game season. That said, buckle up. Grab your coffee or Mountain Dew KickStart and follow Betting with Bearman down this rabbit hole of betting edges.

Charlie Morton faces Taj Bradley in this spot, two righties with a losing record and an expected ERA that is essentially a run better than what the back of their baseball card currently shows. It's fair to think that the over/under for this game comes in a touch high, understanding that the public plays a part in hammering these lines into place and the crooked ERA's don't exactly scream "pitcher's duel" to most.

Both of these pitchers have had better results in their two outings this month (2.74 cumulative ERA) and in this era of three-true outcomes, both have shown well for themselves lately in limiting the big mistake (Bradley hasn't allowed a home run in a month and Morton just one bomb allowed since the beginning of June). But that's just the start.

Since June 1, the O's and Rays both rank inside the 10 in first strike rate. That can be read one of two ways -- either they are overly aggressive or they have a low offensive floor because they are continuously working from behind. I lean the latter and to dismiss the former in this specific spot, only 13.7% of at-bats against these starters ends after the first pitch.

How impactful is falling behind in the count? Here are the offenses that held the highest first pitch strike rates a season ago and where they finished the season in terms of runs.

So yea, we saw correlation between a high FStrike% and a low run total over the course of an extended sample size.

OK, so we think this is going to be a lower scoring game ... how do we best bet it?

You could put 1.25 units into the "under" and call it a day. You could do that for any inning increment and I wouldn't blame you. But I noticed some pricing differences across the two books Betting with Bearman has access to in Connecticut and wanted to exploit them.

DraftKings has the Rays +0.5 runs through five innings priced at -145 (FanDuel: -186). On the flip side, FanDuel has the Orioles +0.5 runs through five innings priced at -135 (DraftKings: -154). We don't have a free roll situation, but we do have a pricing difference and that allows us to attack this in a unique fashion.

Time for some math fun! Let's use $100 as a unit for the sake of simplicity. The explanation above details why we like the under 2.5 runs through three innings in this game, another prop that is priced differently at these shops.

Under 2.5 runs through three innings: +114 at DraftKings compared to -110 at FanDuel ($34.48 to win $39.30) Rays +0.5 runs through five innings: -145 at DraftKings ($50 to win $34.48) Orioles +0.5 runs through five innings: -135 at FanDuel ($50 to win $37.04)

You're not losing both of the spread bets, but there is a world in which you cash both (any tie score would do the trick and if you like my analysis, a lower scoring game naturally comes with more tie equity). The WORST case in this example is -$50, the loss of half a unit. Not ideal, but you were ready to risk a full unit on your initial bet, so this isn't the end of the world.

But what if we've handicapped this thing correctly?

If you risked the same amount (in this example, $125) on the under for the full game and your analysis paid out, you walk away with a profit of $113.63. In the best case for this bet, the profit is nearly identical ($110.82) despite only taking on half the risk.

Up the risk on your favorite angle and you could swing the odds, but the general idea remains ... by getting a little crafty, we've lowered my risk tolerance without crushing the potential win.