Thursday is the true opening day for Major League Baseball, and count me in as someone who is very interested.
And when I say “interested,” I mean “interested in playing MLB DFS, not particularly interested in watching the sport. In fact, I probably won’t watch a single pitch all year unless the Mets do something special, and even then I won’t hop on the bandwagon until late August.”
What do you want from me? I like MLB DFS. In fact, I think it might be my favorite form of DFS. And now that I think about it, it definitely is my favorite form of gambling.
Why? Because numbers, man. Numbers.
Baseball is unique among the big sports in that A) advanced statistics are readily available and B) they actually mean something.
This is not to say that advanced stats in other sports aren’t predictive. Lord knows there’s a whole industry built on that. But with baseball… I don’t know. It’s different.
Even at its most basic – lefty/righty splits – there is actual and actionable information.
Again, this is not to say that football or basketball or other sports’ statistics are meaningless, but baseball’s math – at least to me – just feels better suited to success.
And once you start getting into the nitty-gritty – how a batter does against sinkerballs, how a pitcher generally places his sinkerball, how the batter fares against the sinkerball across different parts of the plate, what the weather is, where the game is being played, etc. – well, things start to add up.
There have been enough cases in my baseball and DFS gambling life where the above scenario showed a batter vs. pitcher matchup that jumped off the page, and lo and behold, real life happened and the scenario I envisioned in the numbers came to pass.
Of course, baseball is a cruel and curious game. For instance: Let’s say over a 50 at-bat sample Mike Trout is hitting .675 with a 2.000 OPS against sinkerballs in a high humidity environment in Texas. Doesn’t matter the exact parameters, but let’s just assume it’s clear he lines up perfectly against the opposing pitcher.
Well, Trout can come up to the plate four times, hit the ball harder than any other human being has ever hit a ball four straight times, and all four at-bats can end with the left fielder snagging the line drive.
Alternately, [insert light-hitting shortstop who’s only here for his glovework] can have .000 everything against every pitcher in every ballpark and bloop in a single, steal two bases, and score a run – and he’s in the winning lineup while your Trout teams are scraping the bottom.
And not only can that happen, I can guarantee that will happen, and I can further make a near-promise that will happen to someone, in some form, on opening day.
Yes, a cruel and curious game, but also one that, in the long run, plays closer to the math than any other sport. And for that reason, I am more than ready to – wait for it – play ball.
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