i have seen almost as many baseball handicapping 'systems' as i have baseball 'cappers'. some say baseball is the easiest sport to win at, while others say its near impossible. i guess i fall somewhere in between. most years have been pretty easy for me as you can usually just blindly bet dogs and comeout a winner. some years however ('98 comes to mind as one, and lasy year for sure) when the dogs don't fare so well. by my research, ly was one of the worst years ever for baseball parity, unless i missed something in my research, the bad teams last year were worse than ever. at least in the last 30 years, there had not been more than 3 teams under .400, ly there were 6-7 thru much of the season with 4 under that number at the end and 2 just barely over. that makes life difficult for those who like to play the doggies.
hopefully, given the fact that '02 was a 'fave year' we will get some line value on dogs in '03.
as far as actually handicapping the games, pay attention to 'current form' in other words don't look back too far to judge a team's performance. various models i have played around with suggest that 10 days to maybe last month are most interesting. you will find sluggin% + ob% to be interesting offensive #s. early in the season look to fade starting pitchers in their second game if they have a long first outing. keep an eye on bullpen numbers. solid bp numbers will not only help with wins but also 'unders' (eg, san fransisco)
i think the most important thing is to be very carefull about laying big chalk. many will argue this point but in my experience, baseball has far too many random factors to warrant laying big numbers very often.
gl 2u and all baseball players.
