For avid baseball bettors drawn to substantial favorites, the available betting choices traditionally have been fairly binary: either go big and lay the price to back the favorite or opt for the run line, sacrificing 1.5 runs for more appealing odds. This latter strategy comes with its risks; should the favorite triumph by just one run, the bet collapses.
However, there’s a nifty maneuver that savvy bettors can employ, which both mitigates risks associated with substantial favorites and ensures no losses if the favorite emerges victorious by merely a single run.
Welcome to the art of constructing your personalized -1 run line.
Crafting a -1 Run Line for Favorites
The core strategy involves dividing your wager between the moneyline and the traditional 1.5 run line, ensuring that a one-run victory results in a break-even scenario.
Consider this: The odds transformation on a run line is significantly impacted by whether the favored team plays home or away. The logic is simple: a favored visitor team gets to bat in the ninth with a lead, whereas the home team does not.
For illustrative purposes, let’s take a home favorite priced at -200 on the moneyline and -1.5 runs (-120) on the run line. If you were to place a $200 bet on the favorite on the money line, a winning scenario would yield $100. Conversely, winning with the run line would net $166.70. However, this requires the favorite to win by two or more runs.
To optimize our strategy, we’ll split the wager between the money line and the run line. The objective is ensuring that any gains from the moneyline cover the run line’s costs in a one-run victory scenario. Here’s the math: a moneyline bet at (-200) would be $133.34 to win $66.67, while the run line bet would be $66.66 to win $55.55, keeping our total risk at $200.
Implementing the +1 Run Line for Underdogs
Similarly, you can create a +1 run line for the underdogs. In this approach, the run line bet should cover any potential losses from the money line bet.
Using our previous odds of -200 for the favorite’s moneyline and -120 for the run line, the underdog’s odds would translate to +170 for the money line and Even for the run line.
By strategically splitting your wager, you can bet $100 at Even money on the run line and stake another $100 to potentially win $170 on the moneyline.
While this approach might seem a tad complex initially, the beauty lies in its ability to provide bettors with an added layer of insurance for games with steep odds. Once you get the hang of the math and understand the underlying dynamics, crafting the 1-run line can become an integral tool in your baseball betting arsenal.